QUINNSCOMMENTARY;869733 wrote: Ah, here is the rub, few would disagree that "those indigent incompetents" as you put it don't require government assistance (admitting of course that their fellow individual citizens don't give a darn which apparently is true all over the world).
But caring for those people is far different than policies which attempt to take care of nearly everyone based on the examples associated with relatively few. In the US that could mean, the housing "crisis" where we bail out people who had no business buying the house they did in the first place or mismanaged their own debt or finances or wealthy farmers making millions a year still getting government subsidies, or people who don't need it getting discounts on just about everything at someone else expense just because the are over are 62, or governments requiring civility be taught in school or, or, or.
I think there is a fundamental difference in the way we look at these things. We have social welfare systems designed to help people out of poverty not to make it easy for them to stay in it.
You seem to believe the purpose of social welfare system is to make it possible for people not to work and can't get beyond that belief.
You will find people who play the system get the most vitriol from their neighbours. It is seen as robbing those who actually need it.
On the other hand those who pillory people on benefits as ALL being lazy scroungers get a fairly hostile reaction. Most people have the sense to recognise things are not as black and white as that. The idea that doctors are wholesale signing people off as sick to defraud the system is ludicrous-much better to go after the companies and individuals that play the system to avoid paying their fair share.
We have socialised medicine because that is something we all view as being important-that medical care be available to all at the point of need free of charge. It's not free we ALL pay for it.
You can still go privately if you want but at least with the NHS you know the doctors are qualified and thee is no incentive for them to give you treatments you don't need. Nor is there the worry that you will be denied. To have profit as the motive for the provision of medical care seems both obscene and wrong.
In the US that could mean, the housing "crisis" where we bail out people who had no business buying the house they did in the first place or mismanaged their own debt or finances
That would be for the US to decide. Here people are getting in to debt as they come off fixed rates to find their mortgage payments going up 30-40%. But there is no expectation that the state will step in a pay for their mortgages. there's little sympathy for people who borrow more than they can afford. we also have a lack of social housing which is a separate problem altogether.
Incidentally, have any of the bankers- who thought it was a great idea to lend money to people with no jobs and no assets to a value more than the property was worth lost their jobs? Ninja loans they called them. Anybody with half a brain could work out what was going to happen. Maybe you need to tighten up regulation.
wealthy farmers making millions a year still getting government subsidies,
What's that got to do with social welfare? that's merantilsm and keeps food prices artificially high. As a capitalist you should surely be in favour of a free market?
Part of the problem the US has is it is not capitalist enough and has adopted a mercantilist approach to it's economic change instead of competing in an open market. That's why your car industry went down the tube-as did ours incidentally, the public won't buy rubbish even if the alternative is foreign and if companies can't compete why subsidise them?
We adhere to some socialist principles but not all of them-the socialist approach to economic has effectively been dumped. It's not all or nothing you pick ideas from across the political spectrum and apply where they work only those that you want.
liberal good conservative bad or conservative good liberal bad just doesn't work, take from both. being in the UK of course, we can bring socialism in to the mix without have a fit about it and use bits of that philosophy as well where we it fits what we want to achieve or the kind of society we want to live in.
Some things-like socialised medicine- we view as a right. The thing is you tell governments what to do you don't ask them. If you see government as something separate from the people that vote for it then something is badly wrong. If you believe that the people shouldn't have the right to demand certain things from the government if enough believe it the right ting to do-well where did that idea come from? Who gets to decide what government is for?
