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Paid for how, exactly?
Socialist nightmare - "Thousands of suicidal children turned away by over-stretched NHS clinics"
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Increase taxes or clamp down on reimbursements.
We need to get rid of insurance companies as the middle man somehow.
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How do we currently pay for any public services? You're already paying social security and medicare, why not keep going. Oh my, I said a bad word there didn't I...quick everyone run to your basement, the red star is coming to crush your freedom.
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You can't effectively mock concerns about socialism as imagined while actually advocating more socialism
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I'm still not convinced that there would be a huge efficiency gain by simply mandating everyone use Medicare.
I never said mandate.
Make it 2 tier, so people can opt for private if they want "better, faster" healthcare.
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but you won't let us opt out of paying for it.....no thanks, medicare is a drain and the govt needs to get out the healthcare business
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And both programs are running out of money as is much less.if you expand them
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Oh man @VA Hopeful Dr, you had me on your side until you dropped that statement. The Social Security Trust Fund has been shown time and time again to be reasonably solvent, especially if we removed the arbitrary cap on social security taxes. It's an easy fix in the spirit of Reagan who worked with Democrats to get something similar done.
@sb247 How do you feel about EMTALA? That's where this "mess" of American government being in healthcare started. Do we let unstable patients die until the check clears? Or just save the rich-looking ones and hope for the best? What about SCHIP? Poor kids no bueno?
Okay, if you're on board with EMTALA, then why can't we spring a few bucks for Metformin and some visits to a GP at 30 instead of a PCI or CABGx2 at 50? If you're on board with SCHIP, what about relatively cheap antenatal screening to prevent crazy expensive neonates?
Why do we keep taking reasonable half-steps forward and then have people confidently clamouring to start all over again (mostly using fortune-cookie aphorisms). Healthcare is a right! Not, it's not. It's a precious commodity. Get government out of the healthcare business! Oh, does that include FDA? CDC? GME for psychiatry residencies? Where's the appreciation for nuance? Complexity? The simple fact that smart people disagree and things take a really long time? Anybody who's watched a school board deliberate over anything knows immediately what I'm talking about (except maybe not the "smart people" part depending on the school board).
America is a big ship that turns slow. I'm okay with that as long as we end up with fewer people (not more) needlessly suffering.
And yeah, if you're rich, paying an extra 2% (which is the added Medicare Levy in Australia) so someone else won't lose a brother to preventable renal disease or watch their suicidal child get turned away from care doesn't seem like that much of a sacrifice.
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You don't know me well if you think I support emtala...the govt has no business forcing someone to provide a service for someone who won't pay. Providing things for free is the role of charity
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Fair enough. I respect your principled (though not at all compassionate, realistic, or politically pragmatic) position.
And I suppose you'll be self-funding through residency? GME gets paid through Medicare. Or are you counting on the charity of your future attendings?
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Get rid of the arbitrary cap on social security tax! Noooo! I feel like that is the one thing finally working in my favor after almost 30 years of being a working class slob and a starving student. It took me from 1998 till now to get through all the hurdles to become a psychologist and make over that limit and now I am wealthy? As a higher wage earner, I am better off than I was when I was driving a forklift or selling funeral supplies, but I am far from rich. Some days I wish I was making 10 bucks an hour living in my little apartment again. Lot less stress, that's for sure, but that why I get paid the big bucks.
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Exactly!!!!
I'll give up the social security cap when they stop telling me I make too much to deduct student loan interest paid from my taxes.
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I see where you two are coming from, but I don't understand it.
Money that goes into Social Security comes back when you retire. No cap on taxes means no cap on retirement benefits either.
Granted, most earners end up getting back moderately less than they put in, but I take that to be the cost of providing financial security for your retirement years and coverage for disability/survivors’ insurance throughout your working life. It's also the cost of living in a society where we keep old people from destitution.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...re-and-social-security-what-you-paid-what-yo/
What if things hadn't worked out for you in becoming a psychologist? What if you did end up driving forklifts? How would the prospect of retirement feel then?
Having grown up very poor in a little apartment with a a $7/hour security guard dad and a $6/hour dish-washing mom, I can assure you, it's definitely not a lot less stress. Now that we've come into very comfortable money (through grit and hard-work, yes, but also a whole lot of help from social programmes), it doesn't seem right to turn our backs. Life is precarious for everyone.
So how can we rely on an invisible safety net (however unintentionally) while we establish our stations in life and then oppose others from trying to responsibly maintain that same safety net--especially in a way that returns most of our money anways?
The push against removing the cap comes mainly from the Right, yes, but also from the financial industry. Why? Because the Social Security Trust Fund invests in bedrock-solid US Treasuries, not fancy financial instruments with high fees. Who do you think led the charge for the IRA, 401K, and 403B models of retirement savings? Financial institutions. And most professionals (including doctors) get absolutely fleeced for fees.
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No, it doesn't. It goes to pay current entitlements. With the hope that the system will still be around in 25-30 years with enough young people paying into it so I get mine.
It's a terrible model that borrows from an uncertain future that it doesn't plan for very well.
[i kinda can't believe I just said that. So not what I used to think]
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This is by purposeful inaction, inaction rooted in the very same resistance that you're voicing. Why fix it if I might not get mine? I might not get mine, so why fix it? Etc.
Why can't we do what Reagan did with the Democrats and raise taxes a tiny bit to keep Social Security perfectly solvent? Also, did you see the data (and not anecdotes) I cited about benefits vs payments? For the past 80 years earners got back most of what they put in.
Here's another option, borrowed from Australia: why not a privatise Social Security--everybody saves from themselves--but at least regulate financial industries to keep fees low, to keep risks low, and to "top-up" people who worked all their lives but couldn't save enough to stay off the streets?
Lots of options. I was just suggesting the easiest and most conservative one (again, in the sense of Burke, not Trump)...
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I would have had to retire earlier most likely and since my lifestyle would have been simpler, it would have been easier to maintain. The jobs I had were way less stressful and I always had enough food and could pay for shelter and entertainment. I was also single though so it would be different having a family. I do believe in a safety net and I pay my taxes, but I also believe in the fable of the ant and the grasshopper. So when it's winter and I am all snug and warm with plenty of food after working hard all summer, maybe I'll throw them a few crumbs. I'm only being half serious, I don't believ anyone in our society should not have access to the basics of food and shelter.
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That totally came across, and you've sounded completely compassionate/reasonable. Obviously this topic is personal for everyone, me included.
I'm sure I'll be slightly less impassioned once I've worked in CMHC, etc. ...
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Yeah. I was pretty socialist and voted Green until I worked in a CMHC for eight months. Now I'm in flux.
I spent 8 months in a place that received government money to provide crappy care to low income, mostly African American patients. The clinicians (who genuinely care) are over worked, over regulated, over scheduled, under paid, burned out and running on fumes. The boss bragged about his Lexus at the Christmas party.
And then there's my step sister. She's an attorney for a large federal department. They lied when they recruited her. Told her all the cool progressive things she'd be working on to help people. She was stoked. What does she do all day long? She goes to work, she sits there, she plays games on her phone and reads books. They don't have any work for her to do. They are overfunded for not enough work. So they pay attorneys to sit there and do nothing rather than admit this and lose funding. She is bored out of her mind, but can't leave. Transferring out is hard because it looks bad for the department. And quitting federal employment is a terrible idea given the abysmal job market for lawyers and has dire ramifications to her student loans, which will be forgiven if she sticks it out for several more years. So here we are, the American taxpayer, paying a skilled attorney with a passion for a helping others a great salary with government benefits to sit on her ass and do nothing forty hours a week.
And then we could argue that the federal government and its wrong headed dietary advice created the obesity epidemic. The opioid epidemic that docs are currently being blamed for started when the government felt we were under treating people for pain and had the bright idea that pain should be the "fifth vital sign".
If the government really could take tax dollars and really use it to efficiently take care of people and make sure we all get what we need, I'd be all for it.
I'm pretty much convinced that they can't. And that when they try, they just mess things up worse.
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Under the Australian system, as Lymphocyte pointed out above, you do have the option of not paying the medicare levee if you take out private health insurance, although obviously no one is exempt from paying taxes entirely. Obviously things are very different in the states, but just from outside observation alone as well it always seems like our more capitalist leaning government gets way more involved in the running of healthcare than our democratic socialist one does. I could be wrong, and maybe if and when I'm actually working within the system I'll see things a lot differently, but I don't seem to hear or overhear half the amount of complaints about government interference in the provision of healthcare when Labor are in power compared to the Liberals.
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As I understand it (and it's not something I've studied much, so I might be wrong), Social Security takes in more revenue than it pays out per year. It sells that extra capital back to the government in the form of bonds, from which it earns interest. The idea of this, I believe, started back in the 1980s when there was concern about baby boomers retiring and they wanted the Social Security system to make money off of interest. The part I don't really have my head around is the fact that it's the government paying the interest back to itself. Just thinking out loud right now, I guess in a way you could say that eventually all tax-payers in their income tax will be supplying the general funds used to pay the interest back on the bonds, thus supplementing the pay-roll tax. I'm not entirely sure how this model is helpful. I only understand enough to know that it exists.
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But how was that fair scale developed? Again, fairness is far too subjective...
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Incorrect https://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/fundFAQ.html#&a0=7
In the annual Trustees Report, projections are made under three alternative sets of economic and demographic assumptions. Under one of these sets (labeled "Low Cost") the trust funds remain solvent for the next 75 years. Under the other two sets (the "Intermediate" and "High Cost"), the trust funds become depleted within the next 20 years. The intermediate assumptions reflect the Trustees' best estimate of future experience.
Some benefits could be paid even if the trust funds are depleted. For example, under the intermediate assumptions, annual income to the trust funds is projected to equal about three-quarters of program cost once the trust funds become depleted. If no legislation has been enacted to restore long-term solvency by that time, about three-quarters of scheduled benefits could be paid in each year.
So basically within the next 20 years, SS will have no saved money and will be existing on a day-to-day basis using FICA taxes which will allow 75% of current obligations to be met.
The same is true of Medicare, whose trust fund will be depleted by 2030 https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statis...Funds/index.html?redirect=/reportstrustfunds/
This same report says that, like SS, the program would be then to survive on current tax revenue only which would result and significant reductions in covered services.
You're right in that removing the FICA cap would make a big difference, but I am absolutely not in favor of that unless SS payments increase as well for people paying over that cap.
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1. I believe you missed the most salient words...: "the Social Security Trust Fund has been shown time and time again to be reasonably solvent, especially if we removed the arbitrary cap on social security taxes."
2. I'm in favour of that too, to a reasonable extent.
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That phrasing suggests that its solvent without the cap, and that's been historically true but doesn't take into account the baby boomers. Now that they are all retiring, we see that its not solvent at all and only was because of the huge demographic segment that was working and paying into it. Now that they are retiring, its not going to remain solvent for long.
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Yup... that's why we should proactively do something like Reagan and the Democrats did in the 80s. The other option is to twiddle our thumbs...
It seems like there are three options. Are there any other ideas?
1. Remove the cap. Not popular with all those plucky hard-workers whose life couldn't possibly have turned out differently (i.e. leaving them destitute at 65...).
2. Privatise it. Let everyone save for their own retirement. But regulate the financial instruments to keep costs and risks low. Top up people who worked all their life but still couldn't save enough (despite meeting some minimum savings goal). That seems pretty fair.
(But this will, of course, never happen. The whole point of IRAs and 401Ks was to get gullible professionals to invest in fancy, expensive financial instruments... and it's worked out spectacularly well for the financial industry. Plus the Democrats would go nuts.)
3. Let the whole thing burn. At this point, I'm feeling more sympathetic to option 3.
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That's about what it boils down it, and each option has its own issues.
If you leave people to their own devices, they won't save like they should and then will be in trouble come retirement age(option 3).
If you remove the cap but don't also increase the payouts for those who are paying more, you'll piss of loads of people in the top honestly 10-ish% that would get hit by this. If you do scale the payout up, I'm not sure removing the cap will do enough to change the solvency long term(option 1).
Privatizing has potential, you'd just need to keep a sharp eye on it to prevent the next Bernie Madoff from getting control of it(option 2).
Honestly, we could recoup a significant amount of this by taking a good hard look at SS disability. If you want to get really pissed off, read some of the recent articles about that.
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Yeah but there would be riots of epic proportions.
I'm starting to think that SSI is essentially the cost of placating a permanent underclass--to offload an unpalatable social problem onto the medical system.
One of the few posts that The Last Psychiatrist actually deleted and one of his most controversial...
http://trilema.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/tlp.html
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If I could put the $383 of FICA away in my Roth every month, I'd be doing pretty darn good. That's already more than 10% of my net income. What does SS pay out? I can't imagine it paying as much as that after maturing for 30+ years.
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IMO that's exactly what Government is doing. Learned dependence and helplessness to placate them so that crime and civil unrest is kept to a minimum.
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While there are certainly abuses of the welfare systems (general and VA), albeit small percentages overall, there are many legitimate reasons that things like SSI/SSDI exist. I've evaluated many people who were gainfully employed for decades before a brain injury, stroke, degenerative disorder, etc, that now qualify for such. I'd hardly say that learned dependence and placation come into play here.
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But let's face it, we're not talking about those cases. I'd be very curious as to know what percent who are able-bodied receiving such public benefits. There in lies the rub. And most discussions revolve around the system abuse with poor oversight and management by Government given the appearance of doling it out liberally - most see money as a finite object.
This then gets into large discussions of taxation, the federal reserve printing money and the conversion from a gold standard to a credit based standard, etc, etc, etc. Which naturally de-evolves into a political spectrum discussion and ultimately an argument.
Personally, I pay for too much in taxes to see it wasted by narcissistic politicians who don't know their hand from their ass.... but I digress.
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No, we're not talking about these cases, we're talking about a small minority of the system. Heck, I'd be down for better management of the system and cutting down on fraud. I'd also be down for the cutting back on the larger drains on my tax dollars such as subsidies to oil companies and defense contractors. There are plenty of ways to reduce the tax burden, we just usually go for the more palatable target in one segment of the welfare system, which pales in comparisons to some other abuses.
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How do you know it's a small minority of the system?
In my n of one, it pretty much is the system. That Last Psychiatrist article was spot on.
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In my n of one, it pretty much is the system. That Last Psychiatrist article was spot on.
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To be honest I don't know, but it seems pretty fair to me that each person pays according to their means - you earn more you get placed in a higher tax bracket so you pay more, you earn less you get placed in a lower tax bracket and you pay less. I just don't think any tax system, if it exists, that would expect everyone to pay the same amount in taxes regardless of earnings is a fair system (YMMV) -- why should the workers get lumped with the same tax bill as Joe Bloggs Billionare? What might be tuppence to one could mean the difference between defaulting on taxes or putting food on the table for another.
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This gets my 2nd point across.
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In residency I did some moonlighting work doing disability exams for the state. I'd see 20 patients per day. Usually 1-2 at most had real disabilities - hemiparesis from a stroke, COPD so bad they desatted walking in from the waiting room, stuff like that. The majority was back pain. They'd hobble in from the parking lot, hunched over, the usual stuff. After they left, I'd watch them from the window. As soon as they got within 10 feet of the car, they'd straighten right up and hop in the car like a 15 year old.
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Perhaps I shouldn't have used the word "placate."
Nobody's abusing the system; the system is a peculiarly American response to a ****-show of a social problem.
Instead of investing in continuing adult education, well-paying infrastructure projects, fairer trade agreements to keep jobs in the US, etc., we debate banning Muslim immigrants, which bathrooms people should use, and whether self-proclaimed terrorist sympathisers should be able to buy machine guns. Why? Two reasons. First, a multi-billion dollar political industry has built itself around sustaining these kinds of debates. Second, Americans consistently vaunt principles over pragmatism--a deeply-rooted American tradition, for better or for worse.
We've therefore incentivised the medicalisation of poverty. With drugs, doctors, nurses, health centres, iatrogenic side effects, and all the interposing bureaucracy--the costs pile up. You could have just spent the money repaving a pot-holed street with $20/hour paying jobs.
What if doctors said, "You meet the criteria, but I really don't think anything is medically wrong with you. You seem to just really need money. And society has decided that this medical spectacle is what you must do in order to get money. Let me diagnose and medicate you in the most benign way possible." Done. Maybe then those doctors would feel less angry at their patients if they realised their real purpose wasn't actually medical but to facilitate America's bizarre and tortuous approach to social policy.
For what it's worth, I believe in a limited government, but an energetic one--one that supports the redistribution of opportunity. This is a Rawlsian argument that acknowledges luck--the ovarian lottery--plays a greater role in determining your future than any other single factor. So let everyone have a fair go, or as close to it as possible, and have a modest safety net in case someone doesn't make it, by dint of their personal failings or forces beyond their control. Fundamental attribution error, anyone?
Coincidentally, I spent yesterday doing at-home postnatal checks. A midwife asked me why breastpumps are so damn popular in the US. She looked shocked when I explained that most American women only recently got unpaid maternity leave. Who has time to actually breast-feed their child?
By comparison, all women in Australia receive months of paid maternity leave, pre-birth education classes, 2 days in hospital with lactation consultants, physiotherapy for pelvic floor rehabilitation and postnatal visits by midwives or GPs until they feel comfortable caring for their baby. Personal cost? $0.
What kind of society do you want to live in?
NB: Australia also has a tax rate comparable to the US for high-income earners--59% vs 60% at the highest level if you include state tax.
http://taxfoundation.org/article/corporate-income-tax-rates-around-world-2015
http://www.europeanceo.com/finance/take-home-salary-for-top-earners-in-the-g20-nations/
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You make some excellent points here, especially regarding 'ingrained', for want of a better word, cultural ideas and differences in the US. That's one thing I have to keep reminding myself when I'm discussing the issue of universal healthcare, because inevitably the democratic socialist in me just eventually wants to start pounding on the keyboard, and shouting 'OMG, why is this even a debate in the first place, just implement universal healthcare already, FFS!'
Okay, well maybe not quite frothing at the mouth, caps lock of rage *that* literally, but yeah the cultural differences are definitely something that need to be looked at and taken into consideration as well. I mean Australia, in contrast with the US, didn't have to go to war with an entire country/empire just to gain it's freedom - we just pretty much went 'Hey, check it out, we're not a penal colony anymore...anyone for federation?' and then we rocked up to the King at the time, and went 'Yeah, nah, the thing is we're not actually a penal colony anymore, so can we like have our own constitution and run the country ourselves and ****?' and the King went 'Yeah alright, sounds fair'. Okay, it didn't quite happen like that, but you catch my drift. And then this brand new little, just been cut from the apron strings, country is only just feeling it's way into a national identity, when we go off and fight this mega advanced for the times, absolute holocaust of a war (or at least that's how I imagine people having to shift their thinking/military ideas from something like the Boer War to the Great War would have been thinking at the time), and then after all that it's like 'ANZAC legend: our national identity was forged at Gallipoli, where principals such as egalatarianism, and 'mateship' were woven into the very fabric of Australian society' (which is, again, obviously a really simplified version of events, but essentially true at it's core, I mean most Australians if you ask them about the whole idea of ANZAC, and the concept of mateship, will probably give you some variation of 'Straya, mate, f**k yeah' as a response).Now contrast that against the experience of America has a nation, where they've literally had to fight not only to gain their freedom, but to even hang onto it while everything was being set up, and whether or not all that Paul Revere stuff happened or not, the British really were coming, and it's like 'Okay, people in other countries, do you now see why the US taken as a culture on the whole, might take a really long time to relinquish one system and accept something different in it's place?' Americans literally bled and died for their freedom, and damned if anyone is gonna take that off them ~ What did Australia have to do in contrast to that? Oh, that's right, we had some pompous parade, and then signed a bunch of documents, and probably trotted off for a nice cup of tea and a spot of Gin after all those tiresome formalities were over'.
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You make some excellent points here, especially regarding 'ingrained', for want of a better word, cultural ideas and differences in the US. That's one thing I have to keep reminding myself when I'm discussing the issue of universal healthcare, because inevitably the democratic socialist in me just eventually wants to start pounding on the keyboard, and shouting 'OMG, why is this even a debate in the first place, just implement universal healthcare already, FFS!'
Now contrast that against the experience of America has a nation, where they've literally had to fight not only to gain their freedom, but to even hang onto it while everything was being set up, and whether or not all that Paul Revere stuff happened or not, the British really were coming, and it's like 'Okay, people in other countries, do you now see why the US taken as a culture on the whole, might take a really long time to relinquish one system and accept something different in it's place?' Americans literally bled and died for their freedom, and damned if anyone is gonna take that off them ~ What did Australia have to do in contrast to that? Oh, that's right, we had some pompous parade, and then signed a bunch of documents, and probably trotted off for a nice cup of tea and a spot of Gin after all those tiresome formalities were over'.
In America, if you went West, you could start a new life and partake in the bounty of the frontier. Individualism and commitment to liberty became part and parcel of the American story, with all its attendent tropes and motifs.
In Australia, if you went West, you'd die. Miserably. The bush was not kind to loners. People had to band together to survive, and the penal colony embraced ideals of pragmatic communitarianism.
The best paper I ever read on American identity was on John Wayne, the frontier and its effect on American identity.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/03/06/american-adam/
It's easy to read this and immediately understand why Donald Trump is so popular or why certain themes in American life are so prominent (violence, being an outsider, redemption and second chances, etc.) These themes are peculiarly American. Nobody runs on the "outsider" message abroad. Not really, at least. No ethnic minority would ever be selected as prime minister in the UK or Australia. No other country shows people being gruesomely murdered on prime-time television but throws a national fit over Janet Jackson's right nipple (except Saudi Arabia, etc.). It's not good or bad, but just the dominant American meta-narrative.
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Will have to book mark that paper for a later read, cheers, always interested in understanding different systems of thought and culture.
There's also a really good article I found some years back, where it talks about democratic socialism in Australia as an extension of the bolded part of your comment, but I can't for the life of me find it again. I'll post the link if I do come across it, but basically it broke down why democratic socialism isn't necessarily this big scary word in Australia, because of the pragmatic ideals we'd been more or less forced to adopt in order to survive a harsh climate (hence like you said we also embraced ideals in line with communitarianism).
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Love the perspective from the Aussies. As an American who spent many years oversees, I see some of the same cultural traits as do you. I always find it humorous when people here say we should be more like these "enlightened" European countries. First off, they are neglecting fariy recent history of global imperialism and destruction. Second, it discounts the strengths that are inherent in our culture. Third, if we want to emulate anyone, we should pick Australia cause we have a lot more in common with them than we do with Sweden or Belgium or France.
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As a counterpoint...
First off, when Americans tend to talk about "enlightened" European countries for socialism, I think they're usually referring to the Scandinavian ones. I don't think too many folks are referring to France and Portugal. Britain, sure, but to a much lesser degree than Scandinavia, which doesn't have as much of the imperialist history as the rest, and certainly not in any way that seemed to shape their socialism.
Second, none of the strengths of our culture should impair us in any way from supporting our fellow Americans. In fact, I think this is a component of our history that used to be a strength that we lost.
Third, Australia is not a bad pick. I'd put Canada up there as well. Not because we have more in common with them than the Scandinavians, but because their form of socialism is more limited and would require less sacrifice. One of the components of our changing culture is a lack of willingness to sacrifice for others. If we could provide good, universal healthcare with an across the board 10% increase in income tax, I don't think it would ever pass popular vote. That may be a cynical view, but I'd be comfortable putting money on it.
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Yes, the Scandinavians do some things right and we could learn from them, but as someone with Scandinavian heritage, I can tell you that they are much different than us. The question of how to implement things in this country needs to take into account cultural factors which I think the Aussie posters so aptly pointed out.
As far as cultural strengths go, part of the perspective that gets in the way of helping other Americans is the historic emphasis on self-reliance in our culture. I have lived in a couple of frontier states and I only half-jokingly say that the state mottoes should be "you're on your own." We don't have all that fancy healthcare stuff and social programs here, we don't even have a psychiatrist in our county. We do have lots of guns though and 2 senators just like them civilized states. As someone from a more civilized state myself, at times I struggle with seeing these backwards seeming, live free or die types as a strength of our culture, but when I compare them to the effete, snide, condescending professors that were in my undergrad institution, then it makes it a bit more apparent. Oh, and these people are always willing to lend a hand to a person in need, much more so than in civilization, where everyone waits for the proper government authority to help while they just pass on by.
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Canada is interesting. Lots of Canadians here in Australia, especially medical school.
If America is the country of the Frontier, and Australia is the country of the Bush, then Canada is the land of the Corporation. Started as a set of trading posts, Canada has embodied this attitude in its Charter: "peace, order and good government." Not exactly a rousing declaration... but conveys a kind of business-like stability.
I think it's why Canada seems to cope with pluralism better and also perhaps why they adore hockey and lacrosse--a violent edge bleeding through their orderly identity.
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I think it is one worth pointing out that the Scandinavian model does not necessarily operate based on compassion, but very much on common interest. There was a recent article in The Atlantic from a Finnish journalist, if I recall, that addresses this. This is not really altruism. And personally, it is also my selfish interest to have a clean environment, a safe neighborhood, good healthcare and public education for my kids and loved ones, even if I could personally afford fancier stuff.
I know some would like to believe that the individual lives on his or her own, but at the end of it all, we are all bounded by a social contract that makes civilisation possible.
I know some would like to believe that the individual lives on his or her own, but at the end of it all, we are all bounded by a social contract that makes civilisation possible.
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A dark side to Scandinavia: the model is driven by pure tribalism. It's a lot easier to vote for these programmes if your neighbors look like you. And public support for generous social welfare ain't that high as more and more refugees turn up.
America is really freakin' diverse. Whatever its failings, I'm so deeply in awe at how well America holds together and stirs the melting pot. An immigrant to Australia will always be immigrant. An immigrant to America is an American. That attitude toward newcomers is one thing (among many) to be very proud of...
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I agree. But then isn't Canada a proof example that both worlds can coexist to a certain degree? There does seem to be a paradoxical relationship between stronger social cohesion and ethnic/racial or any group identity and exclusion of the 'other', but I don't know if these two are necessarily tied. Also, within the US, the most nativist states tend to be the most economically conservative.
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And 40% of our country would rabidly disagree with you. Again, I think we're riding the coat-tails of times passed.
But now I do sound like a curmudgeon.
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In the past, more than 40% would rabidly disagree. Slavery, genocide of Native Americans, Jim Crow, Mexican American war. Our country has always been diverse and part of that diversity includes the negative. Also, is Canada really that diverse and tolerant or are they just letting peaceful immigrants from other peaceful commonwealths in? And how do they really treat their indigenous peoples?
