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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (32634)	6/19/2002 10:39:28 AM
From: Dennis O'Bell	Respond to of 281500

These socialist countries such as France you complain about and others praise are in fact guided by special interest groups, just as here in the US. In France socialism works very well for you if you are in one of the powerful labor unions, especially the unions controlling the SNCF (who are responsible for a stupefying percentage of work stoppages each year.) It's not so good if you're a checkout girl at Carrefour who has had her hours cut to fragmented part time status in the confusion and opportunism surrounding the 35 hour work week, or living on RMI in one of the housing projects. Special interest groups always end up getting the lions share in any society and people on the bottom rungs get more or less screwed. What's important is that we here in the West, with our open societies and governments enjoying a real separation of church and state are better off than any mind control theocracy or any of the, largely ex, communist dictatorships. People can quibble and point fingers all they want within Western countries, but it's best to take a lot of this with a grain of salt. We are all very fortunate in the "Occident", whether it's the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, etc. What we enjoy is the exception and not the rule in the world.

To: LindyBill who wrote (32634)	6/19/2002 10:40:55 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Why not? You expect Medical Doctors to do this, so why shouldn't you PHD's have to? "Whats sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander!" Changing the subject is one way to discuss. Someone observed, Bill, that you must not have traveled much. I had hoped for a better retort than the one you offered ;-). But, for sure, you've not spent much time sitting in emergency rooms in public hospitals in inner cities. The degree to which health could be improved by a decent supply of preventive medicine with enough government incentives to attract a decent quality of practicioner is incalculable. As for the public education as compared to public health provisions, tuition as state universities is, almost without exception, less than private ones. State control of teaching is minimal. Some state funded institutions are as good as the best private ones in certain areas of work (Michigan, the California system before Reagan took an axe to it, etc.). Most public k-12 education in this country works. No reason in the world why a similar formula would not work in health.