A Conservative’s View of Gandhi’s 7 Blunders
Posted by Clyde Middleton
on Jan 21 2009 Filed under Culture, Politics.
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Gandhi gave his grandson a list of seven “blunders” that lead to passive violence. I’ve thought about this concept and list. It seems to me that the passive violence is discord in a society. They are issues with which a functioning and respectful society cannot coexist ad infinitum. If these issues are allowed to go unchecked, then the discord grows, and eventually may form a flash point.
I’m a conservative. I have my colored lens through which I view the world. Liberals and moderates have theirs, and are entitled to such. I am not repentant, ashamed, nor any other label which would deter or seek to lessen my belief in the conservative school of thought. I am going to step through Gandhi’s list and share a conservative view of how passive violence can arise.
Wealth without work. It is easy for the MSM to sensationalize the corporate executive making $50 million in a year. Obama is carrying the water further by saying that if a company participates in the bailout then they will have to limit executive pay according to a set of yet-to-be-written rules. But does the MSM ever write about the personal sacrifice it took to get there? Do they cover the – literally – thousands that tried and failed to reach such heights? When do they rail against the UAW worker that makes twice the amount of comparable workers in other automobile plants? Only after the collapse. Until then, the dems were happy to take union political donations to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars over two decades. Do they discuss the union pension plans that cost ten times what salaries cost? Why are they not discussing Obama’s stimulus program devotes greatly disproportional amounts to the 12.5% of the workforce that belongs to unions? Why do they preach about the rich paying more taxes yet are silent on the non-tax-paying residents getting thousands of dollars in transfers for taxes they never paid?
If Gandhi’s words can be taken in a broader spirit, then wealth equates to income. One should not be given something they did not earn. Yet we are on the precipice of seeing precisely that in large scale.
How will this affect society? The “rich” will do what they always do – they will adjust their risk/reward calculus. The “poor” do it, too. Neither will work the extra shift if they won’t get paid for it. So the “rich” will take a longer vacation rather than work another 60- to 80-hour work week. That will result in less income. That will require the government to do what they do best – raise taxes even more in order to maintain revenue levels. That will result in greater disincentive to earn more money. By the way, the “rich” will create fewer jobs in the process.
It all starts with passing out “wealth” as if it came in a box of Girl Scout cookies. You want income? Go to work. You want more income? Work more. Work is not limited to finding a 9 to 5 job with benefits and a pension plan. Be creative. Earn your money.
Pleasure without conscience. Is it the pleasure of spending on luxuries beyond one’s means? I have a lot of poorer friends, and am constantly amazed at the investment in game consoles and HDTVs, in mammoth trucks and sporting equipment. Many of these same friends are deeply frustrated at their debt burden, yet cannot seem to connect the two.
Is it physical pleasure? I find it astounding that the several women I have known that have had abortions all have deep, lasting, and profound mental scars over the decision. Some would change it if they could; some regret it but accept that with all they knew at the time it was the best choice – and do not carry the personal chastising of wishing they could change something unchangeable. But not one is blithe about the decision. So who exactly are the folks that Planned Parenthood is supporting? Almost 50 million abortions and counting since 1973. Who are the abortion interest groups spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees to defeat a fetal-murder statute because it MAY be used as a launching pad to claim that a fetus has rights, and therefore MAY become the basis for a restriction on abortion?
Pleasure comes with responsibility, yet we seem to be a society that wishes to shove aside the latter. Shoving aside responsibility does not sit well with those that care about society. You want an eye-opener? Sit in on a Chapter 7 bankruptcy hearing some day. Just call the US Bankruptcy Court and ask for the next Chapter 7 hearing. Sit for an hour or so. Case after case of people that have $75,000 or $100,000 in credit-card debt, and never earned more than $25,000 a year in their life.
Knowledge without character. What is character? It seems to be principle, perhaps accountability. In context of knowledge, it is having a purpose for gaining knowledge. It is meshing reality into book learning. It is interlacing normative with applied.
One can study Islam and claim it to be a peaceful religion, yet only without character can one ignore the view Muslims hold of the Jews – the Jews are to be pushed into the sea. It is ludicrous to listen to the UN speak of the plight of the Palestinians and place the blame on Israel. The tunnel system from home to home in Gaza City, the open use of Mosques as ammo depots, the use of personal homes as bases for offensive contact with the IDF – all were known by the Palestinians. They allowed it to happen. They sat and watched as Hamas launched rockets into Israel for months. Are we now supposed to condemn Israel for the state of affairs – or should we recognize that Hamas initiated the offense, and that the Palestinians’ docile acceptance of terrorists in their midst put themselves in danger? War is never pretty. It is horrible that noncombatants were placed in harm’s way. But Hamas put them there – not Israel.
When knowledge is claimed, yet plainly character is set aside, then society fractures. Fractured societies do not live peaceably.
Commerce without morality. Sustainable agriculture, renewable forests, minimizing effluents – all appropriate advances made in the last few decades. Stopping logging because of a spotted owl (later found to live in places like Kmart signs), demanding plastic over paper in groceries, rushing headlong into biofuels and almost destroying the worldwide corn market in the process – all bone-headed, immoral moves.
Morality in this sense is not a religion. It is the traditional sense of the word – Ethics. Good decisions take good information. Some good information only comes after years of study. Is there collateral damage because of some repetitive act in commerce? Study it. Corporations are not evil. Find a solution and propose it. Is there actual long-term harm to the environment? Collect the data, change practices, and if necessary seek legislation. Knee-jerk demands on companies through environmental lobbies or extortion artists like Jesse Jackson are immoral.
“Man-made global warming” is not longer the catchphrase. It is now “climate change.” The scientific argument was lost largely because of a lack of ethics – the source data was cooked, so the label was changed. Now we are facing a cap-and-trade system that will claim commerce is acting immorally because of CO2 emissions. A faux morality is being cast on commerce because of the issue-oriented activists of the world. They ignore normal fluctuations in climate, ignore the same changes happening on Mars, and ignore solar activity.
Commerce needs to act morally so as not to disproportionally take away from our resources, but equally so, commerce needs to be allowed to develop without false premises driving up their cost of business.
There are few greater bases for passive violence – discord – in a society than unbridled inflation, and that is precisely where we are headed.
Science without humanity. Which is more humane: Initial testing of a product on a human or an animal? The answer should be obvious. Does that mean that we have free reign to test in any manner we choose on animals? Of course not. Testing on any live thing that can experience pain should be towards the end of the testing process, and only when necessary.
President Bush was ridiculed for his stance on fetal stem cells. Yet the MSM did not publish that every advance using stem cells came from adult stem cells – not a single one from fetal stem cells – and it has been the hard-core focus of some scientists to prove the worth of fetal cells … they just haven’t been able to do it. The MSM publishes only in passing that adult stem cells has been reverse engineered to create fetal-like stem cells. They have pushed science to the point where they have both! Yet the argument continues because it is an easy one to make – it supports the liberal agenda.
Science needs principles. Science has principles. The Nazis had no principles. We are not the Nazis, nor have we ever been a shade of them.
Gandhi was right – take humanity out of science and it could get ugly. It just isn’t our issue. And those that state to the contrary focus on exceptions to make rules – not a good way to run a country.
Worship without sacrifice. In these days it is difficult to read a word like “worship” and not think of how some folks look to Obama – but that demeans the concept of worship. Obama is just another person passing through the White House. He makes #11 in my lifetime.
Worship involves G-d. Not some prophet, not a whole host of deities, and not a spaceship waiting on the other side of the Moon. As Woody Allen said, trees are proof that G-d exists – do you have any idea how hard it is to put bark on a tree? Even the Bible tells us that all the proof you need of G-d’s existence is to look around you.
Evolution replaces intelligent design? Evolution by definition requires that something change into something else. OK. I get it. So explain to me the first part – when nothing evolved into something. Duh.
Societal discord comes into view when people worship something without a need for personal sacrifice. They become very local in their decisions. They do want gives them the greatest pleasure in the moment. They act without morals in the sense that they lose sight of greater society. Without a moral compass driven by an external standard, all Hell – literally – breaks out. Over time, people act in kind.
Worship G-d. Conform to His rules. Everything will be just fine. Sacrifice in in the very nature of steadfast worship.
Politics without principle. Interest groups driving votes. “I was for it before I was against it.” “Man is destroying the planet – if we ignore the 97% natural fluctuation.” “Global warming means it can get colder, too.” “Taking away the secret ballot for forming unions is to help workers.”
Politicians – from both major parties – are so abysmally stupid is it hard to watch. I would rather chew aspirin than listen to Pelosi tell me how much I need her wisdom to carry me through my life. Reading that 11 of 12 pubs did not even show up for Hillary Clinton’s SOS confirmation hearing was embarrassing.
How does a crackhead like Marion Barry get elected in the first place?
We have leaders without cores. People see it. We are not blinded for long. Their policies reflect the wealthiest lobby, not what is best for the country. You know why I don’t like dem politicians? Because I don’t agree with their lobbyists. I happen to agree more closely with the pub lobbyists. How sad is that? But you think the exact same way – perhaps you just never framed it that way.
The number one reason for our society discord, our passive violence, at present is that our politicians lacks principle.
Arun Gandhi, the grandson mentioned in the opening, added a item to the list: Rights without Responsibilities. It’s an insightful addition.
Got the right to private ownership of guns? Don’t go waving it in public. Right to free speech? Respect others when they are trying to watch a movie they paid dearly to see. Right to free press? Report honestly and completely, and stick your personal opinions so I don’t have to read or see them off the Opinion Page. Freedom of religion? Stop telling me I can’t exercise it. Right of assembly? Stop telling me that if I have 49 friends, I have to get a permit. Right to a trial and all the happy statements about innocent until proven guilty? Then stop crucifying Madoff before he’s even indicted because you don’t his alleged crime.
I’ll hold up my end of the bargain by exercising my rights responsibly. If you do the same, we’ll get along just fine.
The Seven+One Blunders make a pretty interesting list. I think anyone could write a version of the above with their political slant. That’s the nice thing about an open society such as ours – we are defined by our pluralities. Perhaps we can figure out a common basis for getting this country on track.
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Yall need a proofreader, seriously.
Excellent observations!
My favorite:
“Right to free press – report honestly and completely, and stick your personal opinions up your ass so I don’t have to read or see them.”
Rock On, Clyde!
oh, gee, malcolm, sorry for just writing and posting. next time i’ll add a scorecard for you. would a formal grading rubric be ok?
just for kicks, could you tell me what “yall” means? a four-letter word with no apostrophe. odd.
I like the way that you use Gandhi’s rather vague precepts and give your own take on them. I’ve been perfectly prepared in the past to criticize Gandhi and to criticize those who would elevate him to a kind of deity.
However, there are some things you say that make you look not so much a patriot as someone wilfully ignoring what has been happening in the US and to the world. Let’s take a look:
Wealth without work
For the corporate executive making $50 million a year: I would not deny that he (usually he, but sometimes she) made significant personal sacrifices to get there. But there is no connection between the level of sacrifice made and the level of remuneration. Someone earning $50 million simply doesn’t work 500 times as hard as someone earning $50,000. It’s not physically possible. Nor do I find it easy to believe that a CEO earning 500 times the average wage today is working one hundred times as hard as the CEO of the same company thirty years ago who was earning $500,000 in today’s money. It’s just not credible. What is over and above the physical capacity of the human body must, by definition, be unearned. So the press rails against CEOs more than UAW workers because the multiples involved are so crazy.
Besides, many, many poor people do work the “60 to 80 hour week” you praise CEOs for doing, often by having two or three low-paying jobs. The difference is that their wage rates are so much lower. It’s not a difference in how hard they work, but in what the market is willing to pay for their labor.
You refer to the Laffer curve argument (higher taxes on high earners leads to capital flight and a spiral of taxation; lower taxes on high earners leads to job creation and economic growth). The past administration was a big fan. How’s that been working out? The past administration had the worst record on job creation for decades, and ran up gigantic deficits that we’ll be paying for for generations. The revenues simply didn’t materialize after rates were cut. (Of course, the current Congress doesn’t give two hoots about the deficit. But that doesn’t make what I just wrote untrue.)
It isn’t a matter of X hours of work = X dollars of pay. If you wanted that, try communism. Worked out great for the Russians. You fail to take into account the responsibilities of the CEO compared to the employees that work for that CEO. He/She is at the top for a reason. Sometimes they do good for the company and sometimes not. Same for any other employee except the CEO has a bigger impact.
Sure, the multiples involved are crazy. So what. If you could be there you would too. “Hard Work” is a stupid concept. Working hard will get you nothing except maybe personal satisfaction, which is great. Businesses only pay what they have to for a given employee and that is the way it should be. Business are not in business to make employees rich and to think otherwise is also stupid. They are in business to make their shareholders rich.
The ironic thing is, in a lot of companies, the employees are share holders and that is great too. Or, and most people forget this, share holders are more often employees from around America. Ever heard of 401ks? Pension plans? IRAs? Yep, all those are share holders.
how has the laffer curve worked out? same way it did with reagan. very well, thank you. here’s your source data – http://patriotroom.com/article/pelosi-i-am-going-to-raise-your-taxes. do your homework next time.
on labor, so you equate work to units. the next step is to state that all units are equal. so a plumber and a welder and an accountant and a lawyer all earn the same thing. but, wait, you’ll say, the lawyer has more education, so that should be recognized. no, it should not. units are units – there is no quality difference between them.
but if one were to view quality, then one sees the value added of a CEO versus another while contributing the same number of units.
my logic has a capitalist end-point. your logic is pure socialism. best of luck with that.
Knowledge without character.
I think the connection of the Gaza situation with this precept is tenuous. You seem to be finding ways to argue that what the Israeli government is doing is just. However, you premise your argument on the following:
“Muslims hold the view of the Jews [that they should be] push[ed] into the sea.”
Not all Muslims feel this way. Not all Palestinians feel this way. You wouldn’t want me to impute to you, as an American, every view of the current President, right? Nor do you allow to happen every horror that happens in the US. You are not responsible or deserving of death for what other people do.
Let’s turn it around a little. The US government launches an unprovoked air assault on a foreign country (say, China). In response, the Chinese army invades the US. Do you submit and accept that the Chinese army is right to flatten your home and kill members of your family? Or do you resist?
Commerce without morality.
Here you get really confused. On the one hand, you criticize environmentalists for not “collect[ing] the data [on] actual long-term harm to the environment and seek[ing] legislation”. But when environmentalists and scientists do collect the data, such as the data on man-made global warming, you denounce them and argue that the question must still, somehow, be an open one. The evidence for evolution, similarly, is enormous, and you dismiss it with a cheap shot – “Explain to me the first part – when nothing evolved into something. Duh.” I could similarly make a cheap shot to you, as a religious person, and say, “If the beauty of what we see requires a designer, G-d, then who designed the designer?”. See how easy this is? But does that really get us anywhere?
I happen to be religious myself. That doesn’t mean I blind myself to the facts on the ground. Evolution happened, is happening, and has been observed to happen in the lab over a 30-year continuously-run experiment on E. coli bacteria. As you say, deal with it.
Last, you say, “Do the right thing” and “Conform to G-d’s rules”, as if these things were simple and not a matter of enormous contention for centuries. People don’t agree on what G-d wants. If G-d speaks to you and says X, then bravo: that must be very reassuring for you. But I would lay money that I could find a person who would say that G-d had spoken to him and said not-X – and then where does that leave the rest of us?
good points, alex. let me address them one by one.
i do believe that what israel is doing (was doing) to be correct. there is no rationale for them to sit and receive rockets. the palestinians? they bought into the hamas program. democratic election – of course, preceded by a mini-war against the fatah. the palestinian people are fully aware of what hamas was doing – the dual use of the mosques, the firing of rockets from civilian areas – and did nothing. if only hamas would come out of hiding and the battle could be had in an open field – but that is not reality. am i to ignore the israeli citizens killed by hamas while israel showed restraint? are the palestinians somehow worth more body for body?
evolution – of course it happens. i believe that G-d designed it that way. but even darwin said that irreducible complexity vitiates his theory – and that has been proven in the lab. his theory, in this sense, being that evolution explains creation. i did not intend it as a cheap shot that evolution cannot explain the original instance. but i find it sad that “evolutionalists” summarily skip over that step. how created G-d? G-d always was and always will be. that is the foundation of my spiritualism. is it faith? absolutely. and i cling to it with joy.
what are G-d’s rules? you are correct in that they can be very personal. does G-d speak to me? yes. and i hope He speaks to you, too. could i write a book about my ethical/religious standards? sure, but it would not be applicable to many other people.
the question for me – concerning G-d – comes down to this … i was talking with a friend once and was relaying a religious experience i had had. i said that i truly felt G-d’s presence. she said – what would G-d what to do with you? He’s got much bigger problems in this world. i responded – it all depends on how big you see G-d to be. if He is so small that He can only only the large issues but not the small ones, then i think we just found a basic, but understandable, disagreement.
It was Clyde, not I, who proposed simply that CEOs earn more because they work harder. I don’t believe that everyone should earn at the same wage rate.
What I am saying, though, regarding CEO pay, is that we think of it as being “the market” setting the CEO’s pay, when in reality it’s usually a board of directors who come from the most comfortable part of the elites. They themselves have often been CEOs of other companies, and have many friends that are. What are they going to do when it comes time to write the contract for ole Chip? They’re going to look at what their friends on other boards are doing, and set what to them seems fair (standard language in CEO contracts sets their pay in the second quartile of CEOs in comparable industries). If you have that happen over decades, then CEO pay balloons without any need for concomitant increases in responsibilities, risks, or hours worked.
Observing this is not to be socialistic. On the contrary. It’s saying that people will go, in setting pay, where their incentives lead them. And what incentive does the board member REALLY have to limit CEO pay? That the shareholders will throw him out? Is that a credible threat?
On the Laffer curve: your post handily ignores the effects of inflation from 2001 to 2006, which totaled 14% (the IRS tables are not in constant dollars). If we use constant 2006 dollars, then the figure for total tax revenue in 2006 would have to be $1,118 billion for it to be the same as they did in 2001. So: Fact. Tax revenues fell in real terms. Laffer curve in this case? Wrong. Deal with it!
It’s not just about how hard you work or the hours you put in – it’s about your value to the organization. Take the professional athlete as an example: We complain about how much they make, and how much they whine about wanting more, but the reality is that they are paid what they are worth. An owner of a sports franchise will pay an athlete what he thinks the athlete will bring to the team. Corporations pay those same athletes what they think the athlete will bring to the corporation. It’s all about the value of the employee to the organization. So, the starting running back is of more value than the 4th string wide receiver. He is more productive, he sells more jerseys, and he brings more fans to the stadium. Does he put in more hours than the 4th string wide receiver? Probably not. The comparison of a UAW worker making more than the non-union worker for producing a similar product is quite accurate in this situation: The UAW worker is of no more value, but he is compensated like he is of more value. Perhaps this over-valuation of the union autoworker is why Detroit is going to fail.
While we’re talking about Gandhi…”an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”…
I’m not saying it’s not understandable, what Israel is doing. But it is just lashing out. It won’t stop the rockets. Stopping the rockets would require either tossing the Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip wholesale (which would be immoral), or reaching a long-lasting peace agreement with Hamas (which would be very difficult and unpalatable).
You say, “am i to ignore the israeli citizens killed by hamas while israel showed restraint?” Mourn, yes. Ignore, no. Retaliate? Only if you are sure you’ll achieve what you want. And that’s where we part company. Would you be OK with Israel doing this even if the rockets don’t stop when they’re done?
“are the palestinians somehow worth more body for body?”
Not at all. Are they worth less? Which side has had many more casualties over the past five years?
On evolution, the examples people have cited of “irreducible complexity” are increasingly being found to be not that irreducible. From PBS:
“Evolution of the Eye:
When evolution skeptics want to attack Darwin’s theory, they often point to the human eye. How could something so complex, they argue, have developed through random mutations and natural selection, even over millions of years?
If evolution occurs through gradations, the critics say, how could it have created the separate parts of the eye — the lens, the retina, the pupil, and so forth — since none of these structures by themselves would make vision possible? In other words, what good is five percent of an eye?
Darwin acknowledged from the start that the eye would be a difficult case for his new theory to explain. Difficult, but not impossible. Scientists have come up with scenarios through which the first eye-like structure, a light-sensitive pigmented spot on the skin, could have gone through changes and complexities to form the human eye, with its many parts and astounding abilities.
Through natural selection, different types of eyes have emerged in evolutionary history — and the human eye isn’t even the best one, from some standpoints. Because blood vessels run across the surface of the retina instead of beneath it, it’s easy for the vessels to proliferate or leak and impair vision. So, the evolution theorists say, the anti-evolution argument that life was created by an “intelligent designer” doesn’t hold water: If God or some other omnipotent force was responsible for the human eye, it was something of a botched design.
Biologists use the range of less complex light sensitive structures that exist in living species today to hypothesize the various evolutionary stages eyes may have gone through.
Here’s how some scientists think some eyes may have evolved: The simple light-sensitive spot on the skin of some ancestral creature gave it some tiny survival advantage, perhaps allowing it to evade a predator. Random changes then created a depression in the light-sensitive patch, a deepening pit that made “vision” a little sharper. At the same time, the pit’s opening gradually narrowed, so light entered through a small aperture, like a pinhole camera.
Every change had to confer a survival advantage, no matter how slight. Eventually, the light-sensitive spot evolved into a retina, the layer of cells and pigment at the back of the human eye. Over time a lens formed at the front of the eye. It could have arisen as a double-layered transparent tissue containing increasing amounts of liquid that gave it the convex curvature of the human eye.
In fact, eyes corresponding to every stage in this sequence have been found in existing living species. The existence of this range of less complex light-sensitive structures supports scientists’ hypotheses about how complex eyes like ours could evolve. The first animals with anything resembling an eye lived about 550 million years ago. And, according to one scientist’s calculations, only 364,000 years would have been needed for a camera-like eye to evolve from a light-sensitive patch.”
I do not say at all that G-d does not concern himself with the affairs of individual human beings. But when you are counseling others to follow what G-d commands, you should not skip over the question of what he does command and how we can know it is G-d speaking.
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the data is nromalized in the percentages. are you going to adjust them disproportionately between groups? hunh?
you can point to one subsystem like the human eye, and i can point to the coagulation of blood with the many proteins working together.
you cite PBS as a credible source for something which trashes a theory that would otherwise support the concept of G-d? alex, i love you like a brother, c’mon.
you like evolution so much, show me a single example of macro-evolution. darwin said we haven’t found it just because we haven’t looked in enough places yet. still haven’t found it. still looking.
Well, hey, Clyde, your source for the Laffer curve discussion was…you, as in a post on your own blog. At least I’m using a source that isn’t me to corroborate what I’m saying…and here’s a different source (http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S22/60/95O56/index.xml?section=topstories) for your protein reference.
Key quote:
The scientists do not know how the cellular machinery guiding this process may have originated, but they emphatically said it does not buttress the case for intelligent design, a controversial notion that posits the existence of a creator responsible for complexity in nature.
Chakrabarti said that one of the aims of modern evolutionary theory is to identify principles of self-organization that can accelerate the generation of complex biological structures. “Such principles are fully consistent with the principles of natural selection. Biological change is always driven by random mutation and selection, but at certain pivotal junctures in evolutionary history, such random processes can create structures capable of steering subsequent evolution toward greater sophistication and complexity.”
It’s not a matter of whether I like evolution anyway. That’s about as meaningful as my liking or disliking oxygen.
Define what you mean by “macro-evolution”, which would convince you if you knew it had occurred; and I will either cite a case where it has, or explain that macro-evolution as you define it does not need to be observed for evolution to be true.
Yes, Clyde, but you were the one arguing the crucial matter for the Laffer curve: that you cut taxes and revenues rise. Revenues fell in real terms, which means that cutting taxes does not automatically increase tax revenues. Conversely, it also means that raising taxes does not automatically cause a level of capital flight that would reduce overall tax revenues.
Seems to me like Republicans in Congress have one answer, tax cuts, for everything. Economy doing well? Cut taxes. Economy doing badly? Cut taxes. Result? Infrastructure collapsing, crapola schools, and two wars fought entirely on money the Chinese chose to lend us. I want to hear something else from them, like a vision for how these things are going to work under the kind of government they want to see.
my answer, if you will, alex, because i am neither a republican or democrat, is less government involvement. raising taxes results in changed economic behavior. i am a capitalist – but not a libertarian. i see a place for government, but an enlarging one.
i look at england. they great socialized medicine experiment in place for decades has resulted in a lower average age of death in every 10-year bracket then us, a 2d health-care system in place for people that can opt out, a distributive justice argument for telling people they are too sick to treat – so go home and die (with the euthanasia laws being pushed to support it). the residents have to buy a license to watch tv – they literally have tv license police. if you buy a tv to watch only DVDs, you have to sign an affidavit – and they come and check up on you!
i don’t want socialism and all the revenue grabbing needed to achieve it.
the pubs see the wind change and want to reduce taxes? so did jfk, you know. you can read his words here – http://patriotroom.com/article/jfk-on-governments-role-in-the-economy.
but don’t cut the dems any slack – if anything is out there that they can tax, they do.
I know a thing or two about England, having been born there and having lived there for 22 years before moving permanently to the US in 1999.
A simple check of the CIA World Factbook (which has a well-known liberal bias
) shows that the US has an average life expectancy of 78.14 years, and the UK has an average life expectancy of 78.85 years. Not a huge difference, but still six months of life. This makes what you just asserted flat-out impossible. The same source also shows that the UK has a lower rate of infant mortality (two-thirds of the US).
Not that the health system in the UK is all hunky-dory. It isn’t. For my own health (I am a cancer survivor) and for the health of my children (they had TTTS, an exotic and usually fatal syndrome only curable with advanced surgical techniques developed by a US doctor), it has been very much better for me to be in the US than in the UK. But that doesn’t change the fact that the average person does better under the UK system than the US system (see statistics above).
I too am sickened by the idea that anyone is too sick to treat. But in effect, the US system tells many millions of people that they are too poor to treat. Rationing is much worse here than there: it’s just that we ration healthcare by income level. I have seen diseases in the US that are pretty much unknown in the UK, because everyone in the UK at least gets a minimal level of ongoing preventive care for free. Hip replacement surgery? Ah, you’ll have to wait a while for that. But basic care? Yes, they get it.
As a side note, this also means that falling into poverty because of medical debts is pretty much unknown in the UK.
As for the TV licence, which is used to support the BBC, I’d resent it if I had to pay it. But I don’t. I think the PBS/NPR financing model is a lot better from a political standpoint.
Last, don’t fall into unnecessarily dichotomous thinking. You seem to be saying that socialism is what you get if you don’t constantly cut taxes. Socialism is government ownership of the means of production and exchange. It’s a very different thing from a regular, mixed economy that sets the rules and enforces them, and lets people participate in more or less whatever economic activity they want. What we have right now in the US is not a capitalistic economy, but a robber baron economy with the regulators asleep at the switch.
on the mortality rates, i actually did a study with a statistician, and the rates for the ten-year brackets is statistically significant. yes, 2 to 5 years, sometimes months – but real – particularly if it were you or me!
every county in the united states is required to have a hospital to treat people for emergency care. yes, those with insurance have more options, but that is true worldwide.
you must be familiar then with the colon cancer article that came out a few months back concerning the NHS – where i believe the number was 10% of colon cancers were treatable on diagnosis but became untreatable when NHS got around to the treatment phase. i am particularly keen on that topic because i left my colon in a medical waste dump 8 years ago.
gee, the things i share i with total strangers …
As I say, cancer treatment is not a strong point of the UK health service. However, that’s not attributable to its socialized nature: cancer treatment in the socialized systems of France and Germany is much better than in the UK.
You know as well as I do that emergency room treatment is not a good substitute for regular preventive care by a general practitioner. Not only is it vastly more expensive (which feeds into higher premiums for you and me), but it also means that people don’t go unless they feel it is really serious – by which time it’s often too late. Would I have gone to an emergency room for my cancer? No – I wouldn’t have known I had it until it had metastasized.