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Offline Karynos

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Re: Communism: A Tour
« Reply #900 on: April 5, 2009, 09:10:42 PM »
Quote
As for schooling in the US, I never paid a dollar to go to school, ever. Anyone can go to school in the US for free if they choose. The difference is again, in the US you have to show some merit, and ask for the grant. The attempt is that it will stop money and resources from being tossed into a pit of waste.  Not that the US is by any means immune to doing so. At my first school I saw student from difficult background who were given a no holds bar 2 year ride. Less then half finished. Meaning half of the money taken from someone and spent on the was wasted. I don’t think you have spent much time in US, I have watched many people, even my own family go up and down in several companies.


That is a lie, and that is coming from someone fairly sympathetic to your points. You have to show financial need for most scholarships, and the few that do not require this are so competitive you have to fight to the top. In the status quo to get to the top if you are decently well-off you have to claw your way up. You may have gotten up there, but most including close family have to scrape and borrow their way in.





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Offline The GrimSqueaker

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Re: Communism: A Tour
« Reply #901 on: April 5, 2009, 09:40:05 PM »
Gentlemen - so many numbers, statistics, and values being thown around. Start to substantiate your statements. Give them value. Don't just mouth some number and expect everyone to nod to it. Okay?
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Offline Benis

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Re: Communism: A Tour
« Reply #902 on: April 6, 2009, 06:13:57 AM »
The purpose of society is to allow individuals to meet their maxim potential and each generation building upon the last.

What do you consider to be a person's maxim potential? Is it to contribute as much as possible to society (in the form of GNP or some other measurement) or is it to be as close as possible to self-actualisation/happiness?

Offline sirwilliam

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Re: Communism: A Tour
« Reply #903 on: April 6, 2009, 07:04:31 AM »
Kraynos:

I assure you I never paid a dime for school, in signed up for the military and I was paid to go to school. The Fed paid for half, and the other half was in academic scholarships, it was 28k a year, and I was paid about 7k as a stipend. I have to server to get that money, that but I got it all the same.

The First Generation students went free too, and they didn’t have to do anything, save graduate from a city high school.

You can go for free if you show a good chance of return to society. As I said before, why would every dump money into someone that shows indication of failure?

Benis:

I’m not sure if self-actualization is possible most of the time, since it seems to be a state of mind rather then a state of being. Maslow himself said it was generally not obtained expect by a rare few.  The best part about striving for maximum potential, in doing the most you can, is that since none of us are capable of nothing our own maximum we should always be striving to be more productive.

In the case of the scientist who teaches school rather then create. He has turned down the pursuit of his maximum for comfort.

Offline Benis

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Re: Communism: A Tour
« Reply #904 on: April 6, 2009, 07:14:20 AM »
I meant closer to a happy, satisfying life that makes the person feel content and stimulated by his/her work.

In the case of the scientist who teaches school rather then create. He has turned down the pursuit of his maximum for comfort.

But what if educating means that he is happier, his wife is happier and their children are happier? Why should he sacrifice what he consider to make him and his family happy?

Offline IainC

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Re: Communism: A Tour
« Reply #905 on: April 6, 2009, 08:11:26 AM »
If someone in the use becomes disabled, they go into ‘disability’. Which gives you 60% of your income for the rest of your life, plus your health care is picked up by Medicaid or Medicare depending on your age. I’m not sure why you think the sick are left to die in the US? I think you have just taken in allot of the junk that is tossed about in Europe.

<snip>

For the healthcare and education problem, I must speak on the separately.

Healthcare suffers terrible from a US mentality of we all want the best. This makes the cost of healthcare go though the roof. For example in Canada if you need a hip replacement, you can either received a porcine hip, which can shatter, and if it shatters you are out of luck, you can only get one. Or a plastic composite that is good for 8-10 years, very affordable. In the US we give everyone titanium hips that will last much longer then the person and is stronger then your original bones. In England if you have class 3 or 4 cancer, your told your going to die. In the US we bombard them with experimental drugs, and anything else we can find. Is it cost effective? No, but we have a different mentality. That mentality is very difficult since, people who do not have the resources default on it, and its passed to paying patrons. As for preventive medicine, we are really bad at it, since it flys in the face of personal freedom. That’s starting to change a bit. For years we have let people get as fat as they like, and then pay out the nose to treat there heart attacks. Freedom vs Practicality.

I have to take issue with this as it is not entirely accurate.

The problem with the US healthcare system is not the number of defaulters, but the fact that people need to default in the first place. The entire system is essentially run by insurance brokers and, despite the outward appearance of a free market, there are none of the usual free market checks and balances that would normally keep the system under control.

Drug companies deal with hospitals who don't care about the cost because they will be paid by the insurance companies. Insurance companies don't care about the cost because they can pass that cost on their customers in the form of increased premiums. At no point does the consumer's interest factor in, nobody is able or willing to take the part of the patient in the negotiation.

This leads to the situation that definitely does exist despite your rather rose tinted view of the system, where people who need treatment cannot get it because they cannot afford it. Without insurance, healthcare is prohibitively expensive even for routine stuff. Yes ERs are required by law to treat life-threatening conditions without regard for the patient's ability to pay but that is not the same thing as 'throwing the best care in the world' at anyone who is carried in on a stretcher.

Let me give you two examples from my own experience to illustrate this.

My mother in law had cancer for five years until it killed her about two years ago. My father in law works as a reasonably senior manager for a US Government defence contractor and, as such, has very good health insurance. Without that health insurance his wife would have died sooner as the treatments she was given would not have been made available (this was explicitly laid out by the oncologists at the time). As it was, despite his health insurance he still had to remortgage his house to pay for the costs. You cannot tell me that having to choose between letting a loved one die and piling up significant debt is a mark of a good healthcare system.

My second example is a friend of my wife. She is a separated mother of two who suffered a series of strokes in her twenties. As such she is unable to work and is in fact registered disabled. She requires constant medication to keep her alive however she is unable to afford the drugs that she needs to keep her alive, no private healthcare company will insure her and public plans won't pay for the drugs either. At the moment she is alive because the doctors at her local hospital made a special arrangement where they gave her the samples from the drug company at cost but this arrangement is unofficial and could end at any time. Without this arrangement, she would have to choose between staying alive and having enough money to feed her family.

So yes, people are left to die in the US system, because the free market does not work for public health and education. This is why the WHO ranks the US healthcare system at 37th in the world - behind every other industrialised nation.

As to your point about schools, all you've shown is that throwing money at a problem is not a solution, which is hardly a surprise.
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Offline sirwilliam

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Re: Communism: A Tour
« Reply #906 on: April 6, 2009, 09:54:34 PM »
Your point is well taken. The free market isn’t free at an individual level (which bothers me to a great degree) the only people who really get to much about in the market are starting at about the 20million and up corporate level. Its kind of round about to say the union is working for the worker, to get to the right end.

In both of your examples, what makes you think that the socialized system wouldn’t declare them cost prohibitive? That’s the reason Canadians come to the US when they need advance medicine, or the Canadian system has deiced they are past the point of salvation. I look at both your examples, and think what would that system do?

For the first, likely they would try for a little while, then let it go. And under the socialized system you wouldn’t even have the ability to mortgage your home to fight for those extra years. The government would tell you ‘this is what we have, and that’s the end of it’. Again this is a question for people, would I rather be stuck equal with everyone, or do I want the chance to do everything in my power for a loved one? I tend to think that I would rather have the option of bankrupting myself if it meant keeping a loved one alive.

Your second example is a heartbreaker, my sympathies to her and her children. Without knowing the specifics of her medical needs, I cannot say if she would receive ample treatment in a socialized system. I do not have the information I need to make that call. To get that information would be difficult for me, for I do not have access off hand to what medicines are provided for in say, the UK or Canada, or the cost in the US.

As for ranking 37th, that is true in preventable death but how do people die in the US? (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/FASTATS/lcod.htm)

·   Heart disease: 652,091
·   Cancer: 559,312
·   Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 143,579
·   Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 130,933
·   Accidents (unintentional injuries): 117,809
·   Diabetes: 75,119
·   Alzheimer's disease: 71,599
·   Influenza/Pneumonia: 63,001
·   Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 43,901
·   Septicemia: 34,136
Heart Disease, Diabetes, Stroke, all directly linked to weight. Even many cancers can be linked to personal choices, like smoking. The US is fat, way fat, again this is because we have chosen the right to be fat over, enforced participial measures. I believe the UK even has a rule now where medical treatment can be withheld from the over weight? A local may be able to tell me if that’s true or not. Again my point is that the US real health issue isn’t from application of health care. 

This is one of those crappy things that gets pushed aside in debates allot. The eating habits and cultural habits of say the Japanese or Norway make them natural healthier person. The eat good foods, they walk to and from destinations. Its very difficult to legislate something like that via socialized healthcare. It reminds me of when I was in China and I watched all the people in the park doing there exercises, that under communism was enforced to keep the population healthier. And I thought to myself, what good that must have done for the countries physical well-being, but would that be possible in a democracy like the US where Individuality is still (though lessening) held up?

And I thought about it for awhile and concluded no it couldn’t without some sort of major outside threat. Like WW2. I ended up writing a paper on mandatory military service as a way have a military and pound a better life style into the population for two years while they are still younger, impressionable and in a situation in which being dictated to do things is expected and expectable. Paper flew like a lead balloon when I president it to my peers, which really only reaffirmed the conclusion I had come too.

As for the free market working in education? Or problem doesn’t seem to be at the college level at all; it seems firmly rooted in the high school and elementary levels, which are public.  Fixing the roof when you have no foundation just doesn’t make any sense. There doesn’t appeared to be any lack of college educated people in the market. Physical sciences tend to have an unlimited market since they create markets, but I don’t think your looking for free school in only the physical sciences.

Also the point of tossing money at a problem doesn’t work, was the whole point. Socialism is basically the idea, that we will toss lots of money at problems and it will work. A complete lack of targeting, just dump it everywhere and hope for the best. As you said, tossing money at problems doesn’t work.

Offline Full Metal Geneticist

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Re: Communism: A Tour
« Reply #907 on: April 7, 2009, 04:48:21 AM »
In both of your examples, what makes you think that the socialized system wouldn’t declare them cost prohibitive? That’s the reason Canadians come to the US when they need advance medicine, or the Canadian system has deiced they are past the point of salvation. I look at both your examples, and think what would that system do?

No, the canadians who think the US system is better because they can jump queues using money come to your system. The canadians who want "certain drugs" come to your system.

Also their life expectancy is a full 3 years more than yours. And you fail to understand what universal medical aid means. It means even if your past the point of salvation doctors will suggest a different course of treatment. Its not so in the US. The reason why you don't have the shortages of equipment is because the people who need it are not getting it. Because they cannot afford it. A simple question is "Is a mammogram free?". Nope? Then balls to your system it will lose asstonnes of people.

For the first, likely they would try for a little while, then let it go. And under the socialized system you wouldn’t even have the ability to mortgage your home to fight for those extra years. The government would tell you ‘this is what we have, and that’s the end of it’. Again this is a question for people, would I rather be stuck equal with everyone, or do I want the chance to do everything in my power for a loved one? I tend to think that I would rather have the option of bankrupting myself if it meant keeping a loved one alive.

You know most socialised medical systems exceed the USA. The UK's medical system is equal to the USA's in terms of "super duper science" and we still get it for damn near free. Not to mention the top medical systems in the world are socialised. You can bankrupt yourself in a socialised medical system for medical aid, no one is stopping you from going to privatised medicine. In the UK you can do it and so can you in most of europe. But why go for them when you get an equivalent level of care for free.

Your second example is a heartbreaker, my sympathies to her and her children. Without knowing the specifics of her medical needs, I cannot say if she would receive ample treatment in a socialized system. I do not have the information I need to make that call. To get that information would be difficult for me, for I do not have access off hand to what medicines are provided for in say, the UK or Canada, or the cost in the US.

A good example is HIV medication. Free in he UK and Canada. Roughly worth 50 dollars a day in the US. If your poor then sucks to be you.

As for ranking 37th, that is true in preventable death but how do people die in the US? (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/FASTATS/lcod.htm)

Your joking right? If your 37th in LIFE EXPECTANCY. Your not Chernobyl. Your country actually spends more per head on healthcare due to the fact that most people "leave it too late" then use the A&E cause its free which costs vast quantities of money.

·   Heart disease: 652,091

An entirely preventable statistic.

·   Cancer: 559,312

A statistic preventable by proper care and screening. Cancer is not so dangerous if you catch it early. Hence in the UK we have free and encouraged mammograms. Hell we have mobile screening vans to go around and GPs instruct women on regular self checks. We are slowly doing the same for testicular cancer. Our recommended proctology exam is once every 6 months since the  GP system is free.

·   Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 143,579

Strokes are directly linked to inactivity and heart disease since a stroke is a disorder caused by the same mechanism.

·   Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 130,933

Maybe spending government money to fight smoking may be in order. You guys do smoke a fair bit.

·   Accidents (unintentional injuries): 117,809

Unavoidable in most cases. Although strict safety laws can help curb some.

·   Diabetes: 75,119

Dying of diabetes? Its a free 30 second check on a machine, how hard can it be to get yourself tested, get your insulin and live a vaguely long life? Most diabetics in socialised medicine die "of something else" since the disease is very controllable.

·   Influenza/Pneumonia: 63,001

Its generally the elderly who get it, a more useful statistic is lung disease as a whole.

·   Septicemia: 34,136

Which are quite entirely avoidable with rapid treatment and indeed without the US doctors giving out antibiotics like it were halloween candy.

Heart Disease, Diabetes, Stroke, all directly linked to weight. Even many cancers can be linked to personal choices, like smoking. The US is fat, way fat, again this is because we have chosen the right to be fat over, enforced participial measures. I believe the UK even has a rule now where medical treatment can be withheld from the over weight? A local may be able to tell me if that’s true or not. Again my point is that the US real health issue isn’t from application of health care. 

Yep. The UK has a rule for surgery to be witheld from clinically obese people. Any sane health system would have that choice. It has to do with anaesthesiology. Anaesthetics are poisons, if you are above an acceptable weight then the problem is we cannot provide you a dose of anaesthetic that can counteract the pain without "killing you". It will often increase the survival of patients exponentially to tell them straight to their faces "You are clinically obese. This is our chart here this is how fat you are. You need to be this weight. You are going to lose weight and we are going to help you. This is the Birmingham Diet, this is a Yhwh-condemned excercise bicycle. Lets go... The alternative is you have a much higher chance of dying on the table"

This is one of those crappy things that gets pushed aside in debates allot. The eating habits and cultural habits of say the Japanese or Norway make them natural healthier person. The eat good foods, they walk to and from destinations. Its very difficult to legislate something like that via socialized healthcare.

Actually you can. Very very easily. Its called "go out and do some exercise laws". You don't aim for the middle aged, they are a lost cause. Aim for CHILDREN. Compulsary sport. 2 hours a week, build more places for kids to play. Encourage everyone to play. If you want to skip sport then you better have a doctor's note with a real reason. Cafeteria food? Standardised healthy. You are encouraging this from an early age. Lock outs during lunch breaks so kids are forced to play. It comes naturally. Damn straight bacon sandwiches are "delicious" but we have to understand that while delicious we cannot eat them every day.

It reminds me of when I was in China and I watched all the people in the park doing there exercises, that under communism was enforced to keep the population healthier. And I thought to myself, what good that must have done for the countries physical well-being, but would that be possible in a democracy like the US where Individuality is still (though lessening) held up?

Yes, by encouraging sport and physical education at a young age. We are not talking about rocket science here. We are talking about more dual use basketball courts (you can run 5 a side football on the same court with ease) being built in cities. More skate parks, more grass pitches. Gyms are for people who have no time, kids benefit directly from sport involvement. Start young, little league is very nice but I would prefer schools to have "sport". All the way through.

And I thought about it for awhile and concluded no it couldn’t without some sort of major outside threat. Like WW2. I ended up writing a paper on mandatory military service as a way have a military and pound a better life style into the population for two years while they are still younger, impressionable and in a situation in which being dictated to do things is expected and expectable. Paper flew like a lead balloon when I president it to my peers, which really only reaffirmed the conclusion I had come too.

Because it does not work like that. You would have to do this at the age of 15. Your habits are formed at a young age. I grew up in Kuwait so I am not physically as active as I see my peers mainly because in Kuwait the temperature is so high you cannot play outside. So its mainly swimming and indoor sports for us. You want to start at the age of 5 in kindergarten. Where you start by unorganised play (AKA recess) where people just have kids running around being kids. You slowly start them up on small sports and work their way up as they get older.

As for the free market working in education? Or problem doesn’t seem to be at the college level at all; it seems firmly rooted in the high school and elementary levels, which are public.  Fixing the roof when you have no foundation just doesn’t make any sense. There doesn’t appeared to be any lack of college educated people in the market. Physical sciences tend to have an unlimited market since they create markets, but I don’t think your looking for free school in only the physical sciences.

Actually the foundation has suffered due to the free market primarily since Bush tried to apply free market principles in schools via the No Child Left Behind policy. Not to mention local council interferance has resulted in many schools with inferior levels of science education as we see in areas of Florida and indeed saw quite spectacularly in the State of Kansas. The argument that public schools cannot compete with private schools is unfounded since the UK's grammar school system actually has government schools that compete or exceed private schools in ability.

Also the point of tossing money at a problem doesn’t work, was the whole point. Socialism is basically the idea, that we will toss lots of money at problems and it will work. A complete lack of targeting, just dump it everywhere and hope for the best. As you said, tossing money at problems doesn’t work.

Which is a naive answer, most socialist systems are targetted efficiently. It is in socialism's interest to streamline to save resources since it can spread the saved resources around and get better services which people demand.


It is pernicious nonsense that feeds into a rising wave of irrationality which threatens to overwhelm the hard-won gains of the Enlightenment and the scientific method. We risk as a society slipping back into a state of magical thinking when made-up science passes for rational discourse. I would compare it to witchcraft but honestly that's insulting to witches.

Offline IainC

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Re: Communism: A Tour
« Reply #908 on: April 7, 2009, 05:23:50 AM »
Your point is well taken. The free market isn’t free at an individual level (which bothers me to a great degree) the only people who really get to much about in the market are starting at about the 20million and up corporate level. Its kind of round about to say the union is working for the worker, to get to the right end.

In both of your examples, what makes you think that the socialized system wouldn’t declare them cost prohibitive? That’s the reason Canadians come to the US when they need advance medicine, or the Canadian system has deiced they are past the point of salvation. I look at both your examples, and think what would that system do?

For the first, likely they would try for a little while, then let it go. And under the socialized system you wouldn’t even have the ability to mortgage your home to fight for those extra years. The government would tell you ‘this is what we have, and that’s the end of it’. Again this is a question for people, would I rather be stuck equal with everyone, or do I want the chance to do everything in my power for a loved one? I tend to think that I would rather have the option of bankrupting myself if it meant keeping a loved one alive.
As FMG said, it is still a choice under a socialised system. In the UK or other European countries with public health systems, if the state can't/won't provide the level of care you want then you can choose to pay for private care. Not that this is an issue in my experience, the same treatments are broadly available in European public systems as in the US. The mother of a friend of mine in the UK is undergoing a similar ordeal with breast cancer to the one my mother in law suffered and, as far as I can tell she's getting analogous treatment on the NHS.

Your second example is a heartbreaker, my sympathies to her and her children. Without knowing the specifics of her medical needs, I cannot say if she would receive ample treatment in a socialized system. I do not have the information I need to make that call. To get that information would be difficult for me, for I do not have access off hand to what medicines are provided for in say, the UK or Canada, or the cost in the US.
Before moving back to the US, she was married to a USAF serviceman who was stationed in the UK. Her drugs were provided by the NHS while she was there (because it was cheaper for her than getting them via the USAF insurance plan).

As for ranking 37th, that is true in preventable death but how do people die in the US?

No, not in preventable deaths, in quality of healthcare as measured by availability, responsiveness and actual clinical quality (link). You can see that despite spending more per capita than any other nation in the world, you have a worse standard of healthcare than almost any other developed nation.


Also the point of tossing money at a problem doesn’t work, was the whole point. Socialism is basically the idea, that we will toss lots of money at problems and it will work. A complete lack of targeting, just dump it everywhere and hope for the best. As you said, tossing money at problems doesn’t work.

No it really isn't. Socialism isn't about throwing money at situations any more than capitalism is. It's about targeting that money in different ways. Additionally, every single socialised medical system in the world costs less per person than the US free market version.
« Last Edit: April 7, 2009, 05:43:28 AM by IainC »
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Offline sirwilliam

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Re: Communism: A Tour
« Reply #909 on: April 7, 2009, 07:09:33 PM »
Full Metal:

That is correct, you do get it much more cheaply then in the US, because most drugs are made in the US and the rest of the world can sit on its hands and wait the 3 years for the copy writes to where off and produce them without royalties. The wonderful drugs that Europe and Canadians have are bore on the back of Americans, in a market system where Americans pay allot more for those years, so that new research can be funded. If the laws were ever extend to say 20 years, you would see a widening gap in care. 

Now you don’t seem to understand what Universal health care means, if means you all get the same health care. Whatever it happens to be, you all have an equal shake at it. Once you have maxed out whatever is available to you, that’s it. There is no other option. Again that’s why you have Canadians who have maxed in there health care system trot down to the US and keep getting care.

And I don’t know socialized healthcare, just like all socialism feeds off those productive person to give things to unproductive, and that it is causes stagnation. When/if the US goes over to socialized health care, the healthcare of the world will dramatically slow down after about 2 years, when the current research all dries up. And the mix of private and public healthcare, is very difficult if you are paying taxes for everyone to get your healthcare too. The market for that private healthcare is strangled out, compare a person making about the median income in each nation (48USD in the us vs 39k USD in Britian). The American is only paying 23% while the Brit is paying 40% taxes, plus a sales tax difference of about 5-10%, meaning, Brits should have a little less then half the expandable income every year. The option to go outside your system is almost nothing then, they have not been able to build personal wealth, so there is no market create. Your taxation makes it impossible for a keeping system.

HIV is again, a choice between the two systems. Where the US is willing to say ‘pay for your mistakes’ rather then, your system ‘everyone is going to pay for your mistakes’.

See, the point of fat people and such is at the core of the issue. For the US, we still have some belief that people are important on an individual level. For you people are cattle. To be taken care of and directed, since they are individually useless. The US, has until this point put personal freedom as our highest directive, that is changing, now more then ever. But for you, people are just something to be cared for.

If regard to using anesthetics of fat people, we do it all the time and they are not dieing from it. Again that’s because we have chosen to let people be fat if they want to. Where your saying ‘die fatty die’.

Even at the point of starting with school (which have been putting activity on the back burner in favor academics for sometime) it will take some 40-60 years to work it out of the population, and even then, why would fast food be less practice? People are going to eat badly as a manor of our society. The US unlike Britain (or almost all the other western countries) doesn’t boast a 75%+ Urban population. It very difficult to get people to stop eating pizza, and McDonalds when its much easier to do that on your way to and from work. Also as a bi-product of our general increased productivity means we have more money to spend on that kind of food.

Again to the point of indoctrinating children, even as children we generally push the line of ‘do what you want’, and by 15 or 16 most American kids are very aware of there right to self, even from there parents which makes this harder.

For No Child Left Behind, that didn’t change education, it added a standardized test as a way to measure education. I’m not how your saying the testing changed the education results of a few states? The School Voucher program that was sought for years, letting people pick schools never got off the group. For free the performers would all end up in one private schools, and the public system would be left with the worst to contend with pushing them further back.

The very core of socialism is to give to everyone, that’s the point. So to say that you’re targeting all, is an oxymoron. Or you have to pay more for less again, where everyone is getting some, and then some are getting even more of other peoples work.

It still boils down to Innovation and Volatility vs Stagnation and Stability. And looking back at world history, socialism/communism ended up pretty bad, and capitalism ended up allot better. So to say ‘it failed before but we got it this time!’, just comes off as fool hardly. I can’t find a reason why slow road communism (socialism) would have any reason to turn out any better. But the Quakers are happy living without electricity, maybe you all would be happy just stopping at the present time as well. 

Lastly, the whole idea that you would force me into your system, while I would live you to do what you want seems to bring into question the justice of socialism and capitalism.

IainC:

I am intimately familiar with the USAF health care system; the maximum charge for an off base prescription is 24USD per month, and 4USD on base. So I’m not sure what that is all about. You said separated, so why hasn’t she returned to the UK if their healthcare is free and better?

As for the ranking, its odd that the goal achievement was 15th and responsiveness was 1st, of the countered ranked above it only 21 had a higher level for actually health, distribution was actually tied across the board as well, meaning its equally well available to everyone as your socialized systems. And it’s the most responsive. That extra money doesn’t seem that bad, and that is not taking in account the free research everyone outside of the US enjoys.

Again I will say that the reason the socialized system are cheaper is because they are not baring the brunt of R&D costs, and a naturally improved eating/living habits, that can not be translated by socializing health care. I look at other socialized institutions and see them fairing badly, when compared to a free enterprise model. 

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Re: Communism: A Tour
« Reply #910 on: April 7, 2009, 07:43:09 PM »
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Offline sirwilliam

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Re: Communism: A Tour
« Reply #911 on: April 7, 2009, 09:13:41 PM »
Why is it then that the vast majority of drug companies are in the US? Where, the copy write is good for 3 years, and they have to make back there money in 3 years. Socialized systems aren't paying for it. The only place there is a market for them is in the US, the US spends several times what the rest of the world combined.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pharmaceutical_companies

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Re: Communism: A Tour
« Reply #912 on: April 7, 2009, 09:23:33 PM »
Try reading the article I linked to again. You spoke of R&D costs and the information flatly contradicts your statements.

Where are you getting this three year factor for patents?
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The 1994 law adopted by the US Congress in accordance with the Uruguay Round Agreements Acts switched from 17 years after the date of grant of the patent, to 20 years after the date of application of the patent. This was part of "harmonization" required by the Uruguay Round, as the majority of other countries used a system from the date of application. At the same time, there is a provision stating that if the process takes more than three years, then the patent life is extended by one day for each day over three years. The net effect is a patent life of at least 17 years after grant of patent, but no longer than 20 years. (And the latter only if the application ends up being quite quick.).
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Re: Communism: A Tour
« Reply #913 on: April 8, 2009, 04:44:02 AM »
That is correct, you do get it much more cheaply then in the US, because most drugs are made in the US and the rest of the world can sit on its hands and wait the 3 years for the copy writes to where off and produce them without royalties. The wonderful drugs that Europe and Canadians have are bore on the back of Americans, in a market system where Americans pay allot more for those years, so that new research can be funded. If the laws were ever extend to say 20 years, you would see a widening gap in care.
This is incorrect. Most western countries buy branded drugs from the original patent holders. They're cheaper over here however because there is actually a market negotiation happening unlike in the US where drug companies, hospitals and insurance companies are essentially in collusion to keep costs high.

Now you don’t seem to understand what Universal health care means, if means you all get the same health care. Whatever it happens to be, you all have an equal shake at it. Once you have maxed out whatever is available to you, that’s it. There is no other option. Again that’s why you have Canadians who have maxed in there health care system trot down to the US and keep getting care.

Again incorrect. It means the state provides an acceptable baseline level of health care. I can think of no country witha socialised healthcare system that doesn't also have a  parallel private industry for those that want to pay extra for additional care.

And I don’t know socialized healthcare, just like all socialism feeds off those productive person to give things to unproductive, and that it is causes stagnation. When/if the US goes over to socialized health care, the healthcare of the world will dramatically slow down after about 2 years, when the current research all dries up. And the mix of private and public healthcare, is very difficult if you are paying taxes for everyone to get your healthcare too. The market for that private healthcare is strangled out, compare a person making about the median income in each nation (48USD in the us vs 39k USD in Britian). The American is only paying 23% while the Brit is paying 40% taxes, plus a sales tax difference of about 5-10%, meaning, Brits should have a little less then half the expandable income every year. The option to go outside your system is almost nothing then, they have not been able to build personal wealth, so there is no market create. Your taxation makes it impossible for a keeping system.
This is a very confused statement full of inaccuracies and faulty logic. I'm not even sure what point you are trying to make here.

HIV is again, a choice between the two systems. Where the US is willing to say ‘pay for your mistakes’ rather then, your system ‘everyone is going to pay for your mistakes’.
Not at all. The system doesn't try to assign fault, it simply fixes you. Not everyone with HIV made a mistake, just as most people who get sick or have an accident don't need to be punished for it.

See, the point of fat people and such is at the core of the issue. For the US, we still have some belief that people are important on an individual level. For you people are cattle. To be taken care of and directed, since they are individually useless. The US, has until this point put personal freedom as our highest directive, that is changing, now more then ever. But for you, people are just something to be cared for.

This is simply wrong. I honestly cannot believe that you tried to make this argument.

Even at the point of starting with school (which have been putting activity on the back burner in favor academics for sometime) it will take some 40-60 years to work it out of the population, and even then, why would fast food be less practice? People are going to eat badly as a manor of our society. The US unlike Britain (or almost all the other western countries) doesn’t boast a 75%+ Urban population. It very difficult to get people to stop eating pizza, and McDonalds when its much easier to do that on your way to and from work. Also as a bi-product of our general increased productivity means we have more money to spend on that kind of food.
Partly it's because of US agricultural subsidies that make it more profitable for farmers to produce unhealthy stuff like modified corn starch than real food. Also it's because of the woeful state of US health education. People in Europe have the freedom to get fat too if they choose to, it happens less over here because we have better food widely available and much better public health.

Again to the point of indoctrinating children, even as children we generally push the line of ‘do what you want’, and by 15 or 16 most American kids are very aware of there right to self, even from there parents which makes this harder.
Do you really believe that European children don't have this same sense of identity and personal freedom?

For No Child Left Behind, that didn’t change education, it added a standardized test as a way to measure education. I’m not how your saying the testing changed the education results of a few states? The School Voucher program that was sought for years, letting people pick schools never got off the group. For free the performers would all end up in one private schools, and the public system would be left with the worst to contend with pushing them further back.
No Child Left Behind was an utter waste of time, simply a sop to make a pretence of caring about education. Again the US spends more on education than any major developed nation but consistently produces worse results. (Link).


The very core of socialism is to give to everyone, that’s the point. So to say that you’re targeting all, is an oxymoron. Or you have to pay more for less again, where everyone is getting some, and then some are getting even more of other peoples work.
But you're paying more in your capitalist utopia for a less than European socialist systems are providing.


It still boils down to Innovation and Volatility vs Stagnation and Stability. And looking back at world history, socialism/communism ended up pretty bad, and capitalism ended up allot better. So to say ‘it failed before but we got it this time!’, just comes off as fool hardly. I can’t find a reason why slow road communism (socialism) would have any reason to turn out any better. But the Quakers are happy living without electricity, maybe you all would be happy just stopping at the present time as well.
That's Amish. Quakers are fine with electricity.


Lastly, the whole idea that you would force me into your system, while I would live you to do what you want seems to bring into question the justice of socialism and capitalism.

It's about social responsibility. No man is an island and all that. Today you're doing well, tomorrow you might be in trouble.


IainC:

I am intimately familiar with the USAF health care system; the maximum charge for an off base prescription is 24USD per month, and 4USD on base. So I’m not sure what that is all about. You said separated, so why hasn’t she returned to the UK if their healthcare is free and better?
She's a US citizen and she'd already moved back to Atlanta before her husband left.


As for the ranking, its odd that the goal achievement was 15th and responsiveness was 1st, of the countered ranked above it only 21 had a higher level for actually health, distribution was actually tied across the board as well, meaning its equally well available to everyone as your socialized systems. And it’s the most responsive. That extra money doesn’t seem that bad, and that is not taking in account the free research everyone outside of the US enjoys.

You're still paying more than anyone else in the world and not just a bit more but almost double. Check this link out. Only Luxembourg comes close to your level of per capita spending and I suspect that is mostly because of their very small size and older average population. The 'inefficient social systems' in the UK and Germany cost less than half of what you pay. And we get the same level of care. Nobody is getting free research either, do you seriously believe that the US is the only place performing pharmaceutical research? Yes those companies you linked to migt be registered in teh US but the labs are all over the world - I live in southern Germany and there are quite a few very large labs near here.




Again I will say that the reason the socialized system are cheaper is because they are not baring the brunt of R&D costs, and a naturally improved eating/living habits, that can not be translated by socializing health care. I look at other socialized institutions and see them fairing badly, when compared to a free enterprise model.

You're wrong on the R&D aspect as I've already pointed out and only sort of rigth on your second point. One of the reasons why healthcare is so expensive is because preventative treatment doesn't happen for large portions of the population who can't afford it. People leave conditions untreated for years then, when they retire, Medicare has to pick up the tab for years of neglect. Or a minor issue that could have been solved with a simple clinical appointment and some generic drugs, develops into a more serious problem that requires ER time and expensive treatments. If people don't have to worry about the cost of their healthcare their general level of health will improve as they'll use it when they need it and not when it's too late.

Fat people won't miraculously become thin and healthy but a lot of other preventable issues will be caught and fixed cheaply before they become expensive problems.
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Re: Communism: A Tour
« Reply #914 on: April 8, 2009, 06:38:37 AM »
That is correct, you do get it much more cheaply then in the US, because most drugs are made in the US and the rest of the world can sit on its hands and wait the 3 years for the copy writes to where off and produce them without royalties. The wonderful drugs that Europe and Canadians have are bore on the back of Americans, in a market system where Americans pay allot more for those years, so that new research can be funded. If the laws were ever extend to say 20 years, you would see a widening gap in care. 

In the list of drugs companies the two biggest are Johnson and Johnson who are purveyors of low end pharma and Pfizer who are again low grade pharma and amusingly enough soft drinks. But those are still pharmaceuticals.

The UK has GalaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca. Germany has Bayer. Switzerland has Novartis. Your argument is moot. The biggest pharmaceutical companies are not "american" they are "european". Now there may be research IN AMERICA since drug research happens globally and since the USA has as a country the highest number of scientists because it is the most populated first world country. If a normal country had say 1% of its population in science and the USA had 0.5. The USA still would have one of the highest science populations in the first world. Drug research happens globally. You are not testing new antibiotics out, the indians are because they have resistant strains of TB in mindboggling quantities that new drugs can be tested out on. That is also research.

Now you don’t seem to understand what Universal health care means, if means you all get the same health care. Whatever it happens to be, you all have an equal shake at it. Once you have maxed out whatever is available to you, that’s it. There is no other option. Again that’s why you have Canadians who have maxed in there health care system trot down to the US and keep getting care.

No you are not able to understand. The canadians who want "treatments" in the US are usually people who are desperate and have not listened to what doctors have told them. Only americans would give chemo to a pancreatic cancer patient while the rest of the world would say "look there is no way to stop it since it has metastasised and we cannot remove the pancreas anyways. You got no time. Go enjoy your life, don't waste it dying a painful death of chemotherapy that will give you an extra couple of months of mindboggling agony. Instead of aiming for time we aim for quality of life.

Or they want something not covered by the canadian medical system. We do have stuff we do not cover because we regard it as "elective". So orthodontery for fashion is "elective" as are breast implantation for cosmetics. However if its breast implants for reconstructive surgery then its not an elective and its free. However if you want stripper boobs you are going to have to pay for it.

And I don’t know socialized healthcare, just like all socialism feeds off those productive person to give things to unproductive, and that it is causes stagnation. When/if the US goes over to socialized health care, the healthcare of the world will dramatically slow down after about 2 years, when the current research all dries up. And the mix of private and public healthcare, is very difficult if you are paying taxes for everyone to get your healthcare too. The market for that private healthcare is strangled out, compare a person making about the median income in each nation (48USD in the us vs 39k USD in Britian). The American is only paying 23% while the Brit is paying 40% taxes, plus a sales tax difference of about 5-10%, meaning, Brits should have a little less then half the expandable income every year. The option to go outside your system is almost nothing then, they have not been able to build personal wealth, so there is no market create. Your taxation makes it impossible for a keeping system.

Yet we live as a whole two years longer than your system. And we actually spend less per capita on our medicare.

HIV is again, a choice between the two systems. Where the US is willing to say ‘pay for your mistakes’ rather then, your system ‘everyone is going to pay for your mistakes’.

Seriously? Thats like saying that if anyone is injured playing sport they should pay for their healthcare because they should not be doing risky unnecessary stuff like that. Its a terrible strawman.

See, the point of fat people and such is at the core of the issue. For the US, we still have some belief that people are important on an individual level. For you people are cattle. To be taken care of and directed, since they are individually useless. The US, has until this point put personal freedom as our highest directive, that is changing, now more then ever. But for you, people are just something to be cared for.

Which is an outright lie since people in europe have more personal freedom than the USA. Simple test, where is marijuana, LSD and ecstacy three drugs that are less deadly than alcohol and way less deadly than nicotine legal? Holland. Freedom is not " can do whatever we want damn the consequences".

If regard to using anesthetics of fat people, we do it all the time and they are not dieing from it. Again that’s because we have chosen to let people be fat if they want to. Where your saying ‘die fatty die’.

Your arguing vs someone who actually knows the reasons.
They ARE dying from it. And we are saying, this is unacceptable go lose some weight. Waiting a month to improve your survivability exponentially is Yhwh-condemned worth it.

http://www.frca.co.uk/article.aspx?articleid=100620

This is an article by the Fellowship of the Royal College of Anaesthesiologists. So they know what they are on about.


Even at the point of starting with school (which have been putting activity on the back burner in favor academics for sometime) it will take some 40-60 years to work it out of the population, and even then, why would fast food be less practice? People are going to eat badly as a manor of our society. The US unlike Britain (or almost all the other western countries) doesn’t boast a 75%+ Urban population. It very difficult to get people to stop eating pizza, and McDonalds when its much easier to do that on your way to and from work. Also as a bi-product of our general increased productivity means we have more money to spend on that kind of food.

Weird cause eating healthily in the USA is generally the luxury of the healthy. Fresh food is actually more expensive than processed ones. And we are not saying eat healthily alone. You still need to play.


Again to the point of indoctrinating children, even as children we generally push the line of ‘do what you want’, and by 15 or 16 most American kids are very aware of there right to self, even from there parents which makes this harder.

Worst excuse ever. Kids are stupid. If you held out in front of them Pizza and Cake/chicken curry and rice they will go for the pizza and cake every single time. Because kids don't know what is good for them. Because they don't know. They don't know that "eating healthily and excercising is vital to live a long and productive life and its fun". And they won't understand that because they are kids. They are more interested in "how can I play more and have fun now".


For No Child Left Behind, that didn’t change education, it added a standardized test as a way to measure education. I’m not how your saying the testing changed the education results of a few states? The School Voucher program that was sought for years, letting people pick schools never got off the group. For free the performers would all end up in one private schools, and the public system would be left with the worst to contend with pushing them further back.

Because schools became less about learning and more about tests. Learning is open ended, you should never tell a kid "don't worry you don't need to know that since its not on a test. And the voucher system is basically a hand out to rich people who are not using the system to subsidise their education while poor people get shafted still since they can only afford the "poor schools". Voucher systems can work if you cap the value of education at a maximum of "1 voucher" like Sweden. As for performance if you ran a government "private school" like the grammar school system of the UK where you have an entrance exam for grammar schools you can outperform private schools without losing the poor people. Most of the people in my school could never afford the education in a private school. They got an education that was often better.

It still boils down to Innovation and Volatility vs Stagnation and Stability. And looking back at world history, socialism/communism ended up pretty bad, and capitalism ended up allot better. So to say ‘it failed before but we got it this time!’, just comes off as fool hardly. I can’t find a reason why slow road communism (socialism) would have any reason to turn out any better. But the Quakers are happy living without electricity, maybe you all would be happy just stopping at the present time as well. 

Most of the G 8 run socialised policies. Italy, France, Germany, UK, Canada and Japan.



As for the ranking, its odd that the goal achievement was 15th and responsiveness was 1st, of the countered ranked above it only 21 had a higher level for actually health, distribution was actually tied across the board as well, meaning its equally well available to everyone as your socialized systems. And it’s the most responsive. That extra money doesn’t seem that bad, and that is not taking in account the free research everyone outside of the US enjoys.

Yep its available if you can pay for it. So availability is not the problem. Its the fact that people cannot afford it. And also the most research done per "capita" is the UK. For a country of 60 million people (5 times smaller than the USA) it has only a third of the amount of nobel prizes in medicine not 5 times fewer. Which means "they are actually putting out an ungodly amount of research to get to that scale of production since per "person" they are doing more research.


It is pernicious nonsense that feeds into a rising wave of irrationality which threatens to overwhelm the hard-won gains of the Enlightenment and the scientific method. We risk as a society slipping back into a state of magical thinking when made-up science passes for rational discourse. I would compare it to witchcraft but honestly that's insulting to witches.

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Re: Communism: A Tour
« Reply #915 on: April 23, 2009, 06:20:34 PM »
I like Juche the best, because it reminds me of the Imperium.

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Offline sirwilliam

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Re: Communism: A Tour
« Reply #916 on: May 14, 2009, 06:47:27 PM »
I have not forgot about you all, I just have had more important things to do.

Copy Writes for drugs are 20 years long, found that in the U.S. Patent Office, however because they have to release the information on what the drug is the expected life span of drugs are 3 years. I went over to the physicists school to ask why I had always been told 3 years, and they said it was not cost effective to try and figure out every way to make the drug since it is almost limitless, and there are countless ways to add, useless bits to a drug that do not effect it. It is apparently a extreme rarity that a drug can only be made one way.

All that other stuff, I will get to when I have time, it will likely be several weeks.

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Re: Communism: A Tour
« Reply #917 on: May 14, 2009, 07:29:28 PM »
You should have spoken with the chemists rather than the physicists when it comes to pharmaceuticals. You also still haven't stated where this three year number comes from when in the very same post you accept that the patent lasts for 20 years. Adding sub-groups to an existing chemical was a fairly successful method of extending patents beyond their actual life time. You patent a "new" pharmaceutical that just happens to be exactly the same as the "old" one +R.
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Re: Communism: A Tour
« Reply #918 on: June 29, 2009, 08:53:21 PM »
Excellent first post scars. Very thorough and precise.

I'm a card carrying, troublemaking Trot. You failed to mention that we're a constant nuisance, and a thorn in the side of the organised labour movement, with our ineffectual and self defeatist railing against the reformism and the bourgeois ideology of the broad left. At least that's what I'm told.

Philosophically, I'm very interested in some later marxist, or arguably post-marxist theorists. Gramsci, Marcuse and the frankfurt School.

Which is irrelevant to the discussion here I suppose, but I just wanted to stop in and say how pleased I was to open this thread!

 


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