Topic: Occupy wall street... really?

[Guildmage Aech]

Interesting article in the NY Times.

He says sensible things, things which seem pretty similar to the UK.

[Mr.Peanut (Turtleproof)]

Krugman usually tells it like it is, which is one of the reasons why American TV makes him out to be a bad guy. 

He, like countless other observers, is forgetting the role of slave labor in America's simultaneous decline for the masses and soaring prosperity for those at the top of the pyramid.  When jobs are exported to states that use wage slaves, overhead costs plummet leaving more money to be dispersed among executives, who can hire other executives and money managers to invest in other slave enterprises.  It's why America's GDP has continued to increase over the decades while the standard of living for American laborers has plummeted.  Lots and lots of money is being made, but nearly all of it is redistributed to the top.

Former governor Jennifer Granholm says the same truths while missing the bigger picture: (her interview is about 3 minutes in)

09-21-11 6 - Rust Belt Bust, with Jennifer Granholm - Countdown with Keith Olbermann

She is rare in pointing out that governors across the United States are in a "race to the bottom," competing with other states for who can have the fewest regulations, the lowest wages, and the fewest taxes for corporations.  When everyone seeks to entice business by giving them unlimited favors there is no floor for how low things can go.

It's nice to see Krugman calling out the response of the elites as phony.  Most people probably don't understand how or why money is being funneled to the very top of the American pyramid, or why they don't have healthcare, or why their job pays so little for so much work, but they know that things are so unfair that it is now intolerable.

[Guildmage Aech]

Most people probably don't understand how or why money is being funneled to the very top of the American pyramid, or why they don't have healthcare, or why their job pays so little for so much work, but they know that things are so unfair that it is now intolerable.

It does seem that the politicans have managed a fantastic con job of convincing working americans to actually hate things that would benefit them, the fury whipped up over the idea of having efficient healthcare, decent job security or protected working conditions seems massively counter productive. I appricate that not everyone in the US thinks that but it seems very widely held.

[Killing Time]

Agreed.
Socialism is such a disgusting concept for many Americans, regardless of how far removed from Communism it actually is, that as a result, anything that can be branded as Socialist by the Right is almost doomed to failure.

[RatsofTobruk]

I keep getting stumped by how the public opinion has had collective amnesia over past policies. Sure since Reagan they've steadily deregulated, but that wasn't always the case. Do these people not learn about things like the New Deal? Larger capital taxes? And in a time when they had some surplus budgets? I did, and I've never even been to their hemisphere.

Regardless over right or wrong, the hue and cry against the "un-American" concepts of any big government strikes me as odd. Especially when it comes from the party that's supposed to love traditional American life. You'd think McCarthy never stopped breathing down their necks.

[slargy_of_thor]

Wage slaves? i surely hope you are not speaking of minimum wage...If so then your argument is a moot point. only 4.4 million Americans earn minimum wage or less of which half are barely out of high school (college part time jobs).  Arguing raising the min wage will also do nothing but spike the unemployment, raise prices of goods, and get more individuals into the labor market which will only create bigger problems.

[Bert_the_Turtle]

The Occupy Wall Street Movement are what you wold describe as Useful Idiots. They're useful for creating chaos. Their lack of message is intentional by their Progressive masters to make it look grass roots and unorganized. If they were really disorganized they wouldn't have a four color newpaper printed by George Sorros.

The entire plan is to collapse the American System. Top Down, Inside Out. The radicals of decades ago failed. So they had to, as Van Jones said, give up the radical pose for the radical ends. Specifically, "I'm willing to forgo the cheap satisfaction of the radical pose for the deep satisfaction of radical ends."-Van Jones Now the Progressives are in power. The President, most of Congress, judges and such all over. Now they're in place to bring the top down. When the chaos and violence grows too much, and the system collapses, and we beg them to save us, America will be dead and replaced.

Socialism, Communism, Collectivism, Collective Salvation, whatever you want to call it- Does Not Work. The government can't control the economy directly. There will always be greed and corruption. And when you remove the incentive to work hard, no one will be left to fuel the engine.

FDR's New Deal actually lengthened the Great Depression. Everywhere else in the world it was just another depression. They happen occasionally in a Capitalist System. By believing that government is the answer he extended and worsened it.


The problem with government healthcare, is that the government isn't good at anything. It should be as limited as possible. They can't run the post office, they're really only good at running the military and only because the military is left to it's own devices for the most part.

Government Healthcare won't make anyone's lives better. Existing Federal or State programs cover damn near everyone that wants to be covered. Most of the Uninsured spoken of in the propaganda are young adults in good health that made a personal decision not to pay for insurance because they don't feel they need it.

Comparisons to health care systems outside of the United States done by the United Nations also ring false. The United Nations uses entirely different criteria for judging the quality of healthcare than most sane people would. They care more that the quality and availability of healthcare is uniform rather than the overall quality. The United States loses on their surveys because while some healthcare is available to everyone, just walk into an emergency room and you'll be treated, the people that can afford the best treatment get the best treatment. In other countries that rate more highly the quality of care is flat, is available at a lower level of care to everyone, and patients die of thirst after drinking the water in the planters.

Another statistic often touted is the death rate among newborns. Here too we lose because of a difference in priority. In America, if a child shows ANY SIGN of life, it is considered a live birth and our medical professionals fight TOOTH AND NAIL for them. In Europe the standards are so much lower and so many children are lost because they can't or won't spare the resources for helping them even if it's a super long shot.


Finally, the difference between the Tea Party and the Wall Street Occupiers comes down to fundamental values. The Tea Party wants to restore our country. The Occupiers want to collapse and radically and fundamentally transform our country.

We can't say that Capitalism has failed when we haven't had true capitalism in this country in a hundred years or more.

We can't say that the Constitution has failed when it is besieged and attacked on all sides, shredded by left hand and right, and whose plight is ignored by blind citizens whose duty was to protect her and in doing so protecting themselves.

Hard times are here and worse times are coming. If you know America is great and want to help restore her, now is the time for the hour will be too late all too soon. If you believe that responsibility belongs to the individual, that success and failure rest on the shoulders of each and every American, and that it's the duty of the citizenry to police the government, we need to stand together. For if America's light goes out, freedom as we know it will be snuffed out for a hundred generations.

[The GrimSqueaker]

It's nice to see an in-depth post that covers a lot of material but could you please post some back up for your statements as they seem a little on the AM radio side of things. If you could source where you say that most of the uninsured are "young adults in good health that made a personal decision not to pay for insurance because they don't feel they need it." Same with infant mortality. What you started with is actually covered here but then you made some quite substantial statements afterwards and I'd like to see some back up for them if you would please. Same with the UN quality of health care if could. Do you actually mean the UN or the World Health Organisation? 

[Bert_the_Turtle]

It's a little late tonight but I'll try and dig it up over the weekend.

[slargy_of_thor]

Mr. turtle.  Bravo.... alot of what you said was a great way to say exactly what i was thinking without being offensive. Glad other people feel that it all comes down to people themselves not being responsible for their own actions (society as a whole).

[Rasmus]

Now the Progressives are in power. The President [...]

You mean Obama? The most corporate-friendly president as in ever? How is he progressive? Yes, he does not contribute to "big business" like his redneck predecessors did, but he is still just a lapdog to their system, bailing out banks at the drop of a hat from the fed (where the same banks are represented, amusingly enough). Where W gave money to big companies, Obama gives money to banks.

And no, this is not a bash-Obama-post. This is just an illustration of the skewed political system you are laboring under, where you can pick freely between any of these two candidates, who say completely different things, and do the exact same thing. Yeah, healthcare was a departure, that's true, but that's about it.

I won't get into this at any length, too many other things on my mind, but if you want to talk about freedom, as defined by the US Constitution (or "Constithreetion" if you ask Borge) then you had better look elsewhere than the Ass or the Elephant. I suggest something a tad more ... literal. Like "It's good to be king" off http://www.constitutionpreservation.org/. That speaks about the constitutional freedom, not about how conservative christian values are a good thing (which is the harp the republicans have been on since forever), or how individual freedom is only possible through government control (like the democrats).

[Bert_the_Turtle]

Actually you're right. Democrats are Progressive and Republicans are Progressive Light. That's why no matter which party was elected things never got any better. To quote George Sorros when the Tea Party were big in the crosshairs, "Republicans need to take back control of their party so it doesn't matter who's elected again."

My last local election I voted for the Constitution Party candidate.

[IainC]

The Occupy Wall Street Movement are what you wold describe as Useful Idiots. They're useful for creating chaos. Their lack of message is intentional by their Progressive masters to make it look grass roots and unorganized. If they were really disorganized they wouldn't have a four color newpaper printed by George Sorros.

The entire plan is to collapse the American System. Top Down, Inside Out. The radicals of decades ago failed. So they had to, as Van Jones said, give up the radical pose for the radical ends. Specifically, "I'm willing to forgo the cheap satisfaction of the radical pose for the deep satisfaction of radical ends."-Van Jones Now the Progressives are in power. The President, most of Congress, judges and such all over. Now they're in place to bring the top down. When the chaos and violence grows too much, and the system collapses, and we beg them to save us, America will be dead and replaced.

Socialism, Communism, Collectivism, Collective Salvation, whatever you want to call it- Does Not Work. The government can't control the economy directly. There will always be greed and corruption. And when you remove the incentive to work hard, no one will be left to fuel the engine.

Nobody is advocating removing the incentive to work hard except right-wing fantasists projecting their fears onto everything.

FDR's New Deal actually lengthened the Great Depression. Everywhere else in the world it was just another depression. They happen occasionally in a Capitalist System. By believing that government is the answer he extended and worsened it.

No it didn't, Hoover lengthened it by dithering. He made the right decisions but made them too late which is what made things worse. Following the New Deal was an era of unprecedented growth and prosperity - despite the economic effects of WWII. Additionally it was not 'just another depression' elsewhere in the world. Most first-worldcountries fared as badly or worse than the US. Weimar Germany collapsed entirely, people in many European countries suffered unimaginable hardship. Claiming otherwise is just plain mistaken.

The problem with government healthcare, is that the government isn't good at anything. It should be as limited as possible. They can't run the post office, they're really only good at running the military and only because the military is left to it's own devices for the most part.

Again, not what is on the table. There is and was no plan for 'government health care. Even in a single-payer system you'd still get healthcare from private providers. Your assertion that the 'government isn't good at anything' is also not grounded in reality.

Government Healthcare won't make anyone's lives better. Existing Federal or State programs cover damn near everyone that wants to be covered. Most of the Uninsured spoken of in the propaganda are young adults in good health that made a personal decision not to pay for insurance because they don't feel they need it.

Not true in the slightest. There are millions of people who cannot get healthcare although they desperately need it due to pre-existing conditions. There are people who simply cannot afford it because the costs for healthcare in the US are more than double the amount in the rest of the world. There are people who cannot afford to improve their life by going to college or taking a new job because they cannot afford to lose their healthcare. The state of healthcare in teh US is currently the number one thing holding back US prosperity, the costs to businesses and individuals is gigantic and utterly indefensible.

Comparisons to health care systems outside of the United States done by the United Nations also ring false. The United Nations uses entirely different criteria for judging the quality of healthcare than most sane people would. They care more that the quality and availability of healthcare is uniform rather than the overall quality. The United States loses on their surveys because while some healthcare is available to everyone, just walk into an emergency room and you'll be treated, the people that can afford the best treatment get the best treatment. In other countries that rate more highly the quality of care is flat, is available at a lower level of care to everyone, and patients die of thirst after drinking the water in the planters.

This isn't true. The WHO rankings take into account the level of care available as well as the availability. "It compares each country's system to what the experts estimate to be the upper limit of what can be done with the level of resources available in that country. It also measures what each country's system has accomplished in comparison with those of other countries."

Claiming otherwise (as many commentators have tried to do by ignoring that part of the methodology) is simply dishonest. There's also no substance to your claim that countries that rate more highly offer a lower levelof care. Having lived in many other countries, I can assure you that the standard of care in most European countries is as good or better than in the US - with the added advantage that it costs the individual and the taxpayer less money.

Additionally, ER care is the most expensive and inefficient way to distribute primary care. Bringing that up to show that 'everyone gets healthcare' is simply laughable. I can give you plenty of first-hand examples of how the US healthcare system has failed utterly and needs a top-down reform but this isn't the thread for that.

Another statistic often touted is the death rate among newborns. Here too we lose because of a difference in priority. In America, if a child shows ANY SIGN of life, it is considered a live birth and our medical professionals fight TOOTH AND NAIL for them. In Europe the standards are so much lower and so many children are lost because they can't or won't spare the resources for helping them even if it's a super long shot.

Simply not true. I challenge you to provide any sources for that claim.

Finally, the difference between the Tea Party and the Wall Street Occupiers comes down to fundamental values. The Tea Party wants to restore our country. The Occupiers want to collapse and radically and fundamentally transform our country.

The tea-party are radicals not conservatives, they want to change the country far more fundamentally than anyone in the mainstream left - and are further from the principles of the founding fathers than anyone on the left. It's an irony that is lost on most of their supporters.

We can't say that Capitalism has failed when we haven't had true capitalism in this country in a hundred years or more.

It's well understood that unfettered capitalism is as bad as unfettered communism. It's why the most prosperous nations with the best economic mobility have a classical liberal framework with socialist policies. Free market libertarianism is a race to the bottom.

We can't say that the Constitution has failed when it is besieged and attacked on all sides, shredded by left hand and right, and whose plight is ignored by blind citizens whose duty was to protect her and in doing so protecting themselves.

I don't believe anyone is making that claim.

Hard times are here and worse times are coming. If you know America is great and want to help restore her, now is the time for the hour will be too late all too soon. If you believe that responsibility belongs to the individual, that success and failure rest on the shoulders of each and every American, and that it's the duty of the citizenry to police the government, we need to stand together. For if America's light goes out, freedom as we know it will be snuffed out for a hundred generations.

None of which will be helped by the current rush to extreme corporatism. Widening the gulf between rich and poor, destroying the US (and by extension the world) economy with knee-jerk austerity measures that impact the poorest while funnelling tax-payers' cash to private corporations is far more of a threat to the US than some people pointing out how the deck is stacked for the status quo to shaft them.

Actually you're right. Democrats are Progressive and Republicans are Progressive Light. That's why no matter which party was elected things never got any better. To quote George Sorros when the Tea Party were big in the crosshairs, "Republicans need to take back control of their party so it doesn't matter who's elected again."

The GOP has rushed off the far right cliff. The Democrats have also lurched a long way to the right. Democratic policy - particularly the PPACA - is lifted almost word for word from Clinton-era GOP policy. In other words, the policies of today which are apparently Marxism and a material threat to the US way of life are official GOP policy from 15 years ago. Somehow it was pragmatic conservatism back then and now the same policy is socialism. There's a lot of denying reality going on within the right-wing and especially the extremist fringe that is the Tea-party and other lunatic radicals.

[RatsofTobruk]

Finally, the difference between the Tea Party and the Wall Street Occupiers comes down to fundamental values. The Tea Party wants to restore our country. The Occupiers want to collapse and radically and fundamentally transform our country.

1. The "restoration" title seems a bit much. The ideal that the Tea Party is hearkening back to is a construction, not a reality. America has had times in the past of greater government control than now, and it has had times with a far more impotent central government but more beefy state controls, and times with less of both. Economic prosperity and personal happiness meandered along, sometimes good, sometimes bad. Before I agree with you, you have to point to an exact point in time the Tea Party wants to revert to and then you have to follow it to the letter, taking the good with the bad.

2. Say this was possible, and you did restore the country. Then presumably you would maintain it. Congratulations, now you are locked in stasis. This isn't actually impossible, but I refer you to the plight of Tokugawa Japan. Check out http://www.fsmitha.com/h3/h48japan.htm for a brief update. Supposedly perfect social system, held that way for 300 years, brutally overmatched when, and the irony is delicious here, dynamic and progressive America knocked on their door with a technologically superior fleet.

Hard times are here and worse times are coming. If you know America is great and want to help restore her, now is the time for the hour will be too late all too soon. If you believe that responsibility belongs to the individual, that success and failure rest on the shoulders of each and every American, and that it's the duty of the citizenry to police the government, we need to stand together. For if America's light goes out, freedom as we know it will be snuffed out for a hundred generations.

America is good. For a superpower, its actions have in many cases been exemplary. Some things I gripe about, but on the whole a good showing. However, make no mistake, if America were to fail, our freedom down in Australia would be just fine for the foreseeable future. Less cozy perhaps with a more aggressive China, but most definitely still there. If on the other hand America just changes its tax rates a bit more in line with other capitalist countries, and they are capitalist countries, and takes a bit more off the top and reforms welfare, I don't think Australia would be concerned about its freedom at all. If the tax breaks are amended we might well feel much better about the prospects of your economy and what that means for us.

I like America more than I don't. Please stick around, by all means. But you'll excuse me if I don't hold my breath waiting for your rather stable and entrenched system to be collapsed, top down, inside out, by some rallies by Americans just as patriotic as yourself.

[Killing Time]

Another interesting article, this time from The Guardian.

Perhaps better expressed here than in many other pieces I've read;
The whole point of the Occupy movement is not to provide answers, but to drive home the questions.

The don't have demands, they don't have a goal, they don't have answers.
What they do have is a considerable amount of dissatisfaction with the status quo, and are rightly angry that corporate greed and their political lackeys are keen to maintain business as usual.

[Lachdonin]

The problem with simply asking the question is they are efectivly leaving it up to the political bodies to solve the problem. Since, by and large, it is the political bodies which let the problem get to this point in the first place (Sometimes even helping it along) the drive for chance is almost certianly doomed to failure.

What i can't understand is the dogmatic, anarchistic stance of the Occupy movement. Anyone who tries to organize them into some sembilance of an actual machine for change gets quickly denounced on the internet and through other mediums as not representing the spirit of the movement.

They make a rather big noise about 'Changing the World', while at the same time castrating themselves of any way to effect that change.

[Full Metal Geneticist]

The Occupy Wall Street Movement are what you wold describe as Useful Idiots. They're useful for creating chaos. Their lack of message is intentional by their Progressive masters to make it look grass roots and unorganized. If they were really disorganized they wouldn't have a four color newpaper printed by George Sorros.

Actually they come from an entire group of people disenfranchised and kind of annoyed by the lack of job opportunities and a government that isn't doing anything about it. It's an entire group that can't seem to understand that that we should tax those who can afford it a lot less, because caviar filled swimming pools filled with lingerie models doesn't come cheap...

Basically? Everyone's been giving a lot up, ESPECIALLY the poor. However the richest of people? They haven't had anything changed. The BIGGEST cause of the US deficit are tax cuts to the rich which have had no knock on effect. Rich people don't invest in new business, they invested in crazy money schemes in poorly legislated nations to make their money work for them.

Seriously, republicans seem to be putting more effort into denying women basic healthcare rather than actually producing any sane ideas on the economy. Trickle Down Doesn't Work. If I gave you more money you would spend it because you are middle class. If you gave me more money it would go into some sort of funding scheme and I merely come from upper middle class. If you gave the super rich the kind of tax breaks that they do get they just horde the money as if they were magpies or dragons.

Apocalypse Now - Satisfaction - YouTube

This is pretty much what capitalism is. There is no malice in water skiing, but the knock on effect is phenomenal. Normally the people who are affected by the wake of capitalism are dirty poor foreigners who are out of sight and therefore out of mind. I mean? What does farmer suicides in India and Africa (the biggest suicidal cause worldwide is not hanging or guns but pesticide consumption.) have to do with the USA? (Think subsidies and food wastages which drop the international price of food outpricing farmers in poorer nations whose governments cannot afford to give them subsidies)

However this time? This time they are right next door to us. So we cannot understand why they are so pissed off with us.

Big business is fine, if placed under regulation that prevents it from making stupid decisions like the ones that lead to this mess (De-regulation of Banking Industry). We literally gave them a loophole that let them artificially inflate the economy by playing Deal or No Deal (securities) and then gambling on that and on artificially inflated house prices. Eventually someone looked inside the box and realised it wasn't even filled with money resulting in people losing faith in money.

The problem with government healthcare, is that the government isn't good at anything. It should be as limited as possible. They can't run the post office, they're really only good at running the military and only because the military is left to it's own devices for the most part.

This is the main bit I actually wanted to address being from a long line of healthcare professionals. There is no way to say this but you are wrong on this topic, by crazy amounts. It's actually kind of shocking how daft capitalist healthcare is. Because how much do you value life? Your's in particular?

You see, I as your healthcare provider... don't value your life one bit. You are just another face to be seen today. I only have an interest whether you live or die based on whether you can meet my price. And when doctors are allowed to set the price, the price will always be just high enough. Despite what you think greed affects us all.

Because you will pay almost anything if it means living. The biggest cause of bankruptcy in the USA is healthcare. Because healthcare is privatised there is an incentive to provide you the least amount of healthcare for the highest cost. So for instance essential medication is often ratcheted upto insane profit margins. Botox? One of the cheapest medicines we can make. I actually have administered it (under supervision and after crazy mathematical counterchecking while sweating like a pig) for therapy in people with Duchenne's Muscular Dystrophy. It's not all Madonna facelifts you know.

Apparantly 3/5 bankruptcies are health related. Which ties in to the whole "securities thing" we mentioned earlier.

Government Healthcare won't make anyone's lives better. Existing Federal or State programs cover damn near everyone that wants to be covered. Most of the Uninsured spoken of in the propaganda are young adults in good health that made a personal decision not to pay for insurance because they don't feel they need it.

Actually most of the uninsured are poor people who work in jobs that put them out of the reach of medicaid but don't earn enough for good coverage.

Government healthcare would firstly reduce the cost of businesses who routinely have claimed that their biggest cost is healthcare for their workers. The government can also collectively bargain driving down the costs of medications bought in bulk. The government can also produce their own medications particularly generic medicines which would drive costs further down. Government healthcare also means people go see a doctor early, a lot of disease is actually preventable by simple things. Vaccination? Sounds expensive till you get one of those diseases. A simple chipped tooth is a lot cheaper to treat than that abscessed tooth. Prevention is only really possible if you have a solid government organisation who wants diseases gone...

Do you really think privatised healthcare want to prevent diseases or merely cure them?

Comparisons to health care systems outside of the United States done by the United Nations also ring false. The United Nations uses entirely different criteria for judging the quality of healthcare than most sane people would. They care more that the quality and availability of healthcare is uniform rather than the overall quality.

Yes and that's the measure of a healthcare system. Otherwise India's healthcare is one of the best in the world despite having a life expectancy of 68 and an infant mortality of 70/1000 live births...

The three indicators of healthcare are life expectancy - How much medical technology is available, many of the life expectancy increasing technology available is very expensive and cutting edge.

Infant mortality rate charts the availability of healthcare. Put it this way, the hospital I work in here in India has to re-use needles and I have to buy my own gloves. It's infant mortality rate is a whopping 18/1000 live births because people tend to come in so late... But outside it, it's 60 per 1000 in Tamil Nadu. A private hospital? Around 3 to 4/1000 live births. Lower than the US average. The things that reduce mortality rates are simple and cheap.

1. Sex education
2. Obstetricians rather than Midwives
3. Proper supplementation from a trained doctor
4. Proper and routine check ups.
5. Abortion.

The third is cost spent per capita. For most european countries this is a linear progression. The more you spend the better it gets. However the USA spends a lot more money per capita on healthcare than we do. The USA spends TWICE the amount per capita as France for a worse service. France has a 30% lower infant mortality rate and a decent increase in life expectancy.

And the MAXIMUM quality of healthcare doesn't matter one iota if no one can afford it. The overall indicators of American healthcare are those stats. Basically? There are sufficient amount of infants dying in the 8th to 52nd week of life and people simply not living long enough to make those results they way they are.

The United States loses on their surveys because while some healthcare is available to everyone, just walk into an emergency room and you'll be treated, the people that can afford the best treatment get the best treatment. In other countries that rate more highly the quality of care is flat, is available at a lower level of care to everyone, and patients die of thirst after drinking the water in the planters.

ER rooms are some of the most expensive places to be treated. A simple ambulance call out is nearly a thousand dollars worth of resources because the people working in ER use some awfully expensive medications to save lives. ER rooms are the WORST places to be treated because it says in the name. You need to have an Emergency Medical Condition that needs immediate stabilisation to use one. So...

Superficial wounds, Initial Consult for neurology/ortho, Car Accidents, Assault, Industrial Accidents, Severe Illnesses, Stabilisations. The vast majority of cases treated are "I fell and cut myself" or "I got stung by a bee". But a fair few are "I fell into an elevator shaft onto some bullets".

The majority of the USA's government healthcare cost? It's from people who use ER rooms in the way you just stated. A simple abscess drainage costs around $20, a guillotine amputation around $500,000 considering the years of therapy and disabled benefits you will require. So do the math, the USA's healthcare bill will drop if it actually encouraged socialised medicine solely because it becomes cheaper and easier to prevent disease rather than react to it. Prevention is always better than a cure and socialised medicine's main strength is that it can organise itself to go prevent diseases.

Another statistic often touted is the death rate among newborns. Here too we lose because of a difference in priority. In America, if a child shows ANY SIGN of life, it is considered a live birth and our medical professionals fight TOOTH AND NAIL for them. In Europe the standards are so much lower and so many children are lost because they can't or won't spare the resources for helping them even if it's a super long shot.

the Udders of Thoth! The USA's neonatal mortality is slap bang in the middle of first world averages... A couple of central european countries lose out because of their high smoking but this is because neo-nates come under free government healthcare in the USA even if you don't get private care. Everyone get's first world grade healthcare. The issue is the infant mortality rate which is mainly due to the whole "A&E culture you mentioned rather than taking children to see doctors as soon as possible". There are other issues such as anti-vaccine stances (California has had over 20 deaths from pertussis this year and it's not even winter...) and poor transportation which increase infant mortality rate.

The rules in the UK and USA both state that recussitation of 20 week to 24 week births is not recommended due to the poor survival rate and the incredibly high rate of brain damage. The survival rate with intervention is 95%. The MR rate of the survivors is 95%. Even those that do survive have severe problems for life. Do not recussitate is a sane decision, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

Finally, the difference between the Tea Party and the Wall Street Occupiers comes down to fundamental values. The Tea Party wants to restore our country. The Occupiers want to collapse and radically and fundamentally transform our country.

We can't say that Capitalism has failed when we haven't had true capitalism in this country in a hundred years or more.

Restore your country to what? It's constitutional heydey where women were slaves and it was perfectly okay to treat black people as property? The Tea Partiers are freaking morons. The VERY people the rules are in place to defend wish to destroy the rules. These people are what are called "Tiger Petters". They go into zoos and try to pet the tiger. They think the bars reduce the zoo experience...

The entire point of government oversight is to prevent say... Coca Cola from draining ground water and then selling it back to you as Dasani. It's to prevent microsoft from simply crushing Apple (Remember while Apple may be richer than the USA, Microsoft are far bigger. They can EASILY create a monopoly and the only thing stopping them are competition laws.).

We can't say that the Constitution has failed when it is besieged and attacked on all sides, shredded by left hand and right, and whose plight is ignored by blind citizens whose duty was to protect her and in doing so protecting themselves.

It's duty was to protect white men... not women and anyone with the slightest of a tan. Hell the original constitution let you own people! It's a living document, any sane individual could see that. By that logic we have diluted the Magna Carta by letting all those uppity non land owners vote...

[slinky1984]

I'm a little late in the conversation here but I wanted to add my two cents regarding leadership of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. I don't believe that they need leadership from a traditional standpoint. A political party of any kind would be the worse thing to happen to it. It would allow the media to pervert and twist anything they do which would effectively neuter any future progress. Look at the tea party movement as an example, co opted by the republican party it has no threat level any longer. It presents no danger because we can just write them off as a fringe right wing group.

Now consider the fact that currently the democratic party has no "tea party" equivalent. I fully believe that they are salivating to co opt this occupy wall street movement and not because they believe in it but because they need a foothold in radicalism like the republican party has.

The most effective and dangerous thing they could do right now is say, "we don't like any of you".  I also think it's OK to not have a list of demands.  It's OK to say, "hey I'm pissed off and I don't like the system. I want the people in charge to get their head out of there ass and fix it". Having a list of demands will only add fuel to the media fire.

When you start narrowing your ideals by creating proposals for change it then allows the opposition to gain a foothold in the why you are wrong category. General feelings of being pissed off and wanting change are not a bad place to be.

Anyway that's my two cents

[Guildmage Aech]

Mr. turtle.  Bravo.... alot of what you said was a great way to say exactly what i was thinking without being offensive. Glad other people feel that it all comes down to people themselves not being responsible for their own actions (society as a whole).

But given that everything Bert said was either wrong or woefully misinformed (I won't repeat the numerous excelent posts that have explained this point by point) I wonder how wise it is for your to claim that you're thinking the same thing.

Of course, you are welcome to attempt to back up his points but given that most of his claims are totally unrealistic, or simply wild rhetoric about USA being the hero of freedom for a million generations and so on I would think that you would have a very hard time attempting to do so.

I'm a little late in the conversation here but I wanted to add my two cents regarding leadership of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. I don't believe that they need leadership from a traditional standpoint. A political party of any kind would be the worse thing to happen to it. It would allow the media to pervert and twist anything they do which would effectively neuter any future progress. Look at the tea party movement as an example, co opted by the republican party it has no threat level any longer. It presents no danger because we can just write them off as a fringe right wing group.

I agree, but largely because the two party system allows the current powergroup to keep an almost unbreakable stranglehold on the US's policy. Given that both parties are pretty much the same, the voter has little choice. This is undoubtedly one of the reasons why the government holds the constitution in such high regard, because if they suddenly had to compete for seats with dozens of political parties with different agendas and promises to the voters.

Here in the UK there are fringe groups, who have the right to put candidates up for election.. they don't get enough votes to actually do it but they have that right, and the voters have the right to vote for something other than the two/three big parties that have traditionally been in power.

At the end of the day, they're protesting about something that is wrong. Bringing up this issue to the wider population and its a good thing they're doing, if everyday americans start looking closer at the system designed to screw them over and keep the super rich in power and making money they might see that America isn't quite the home of freedom that it says it is on the tin.

[Lachdonin]

Here in Canada we also have a multi-Party system rather than the dual system in the States. In fact, one of those formerly fringe groups is the official opposition right now.

And i wasn't refering to traditional political backing. Rather, i was talking about a leadership figure who can act as a spokesperson for the movement. As it stands, they have no means by which to propose change, they can simply state as a collective that they want change. They need, for lack of a better comparison right now, a Martin Luther King Jr. type figure who can act as the voice for the movement.

Anywho, we actually watched an interview today in one of my archaeology classe (of all places). While it was to inlistrate what Holtdorf calls the Principal of Charity, the interview actually brought up an interesting arguement. The interviewee (I'll try to link it as soon as i find it) argued that a good deal of the protestoers are, in fact, conservatives, based on the fact that they want these corporations and banks prosecuted for what is, technically, fraud. So we may not JUST be talking about the left wing in all of this.