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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (92187)	10/27/2008 10:44:34 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541627

Fascinating answers. I had certainly expected a different answer. Let me take a couple. On SS, since it's a transfer of money from younger folk to take care of us older folk, I had assumed you would say something more negative about the principle than you did. I suspect we agree at the level of principle--I'm quite happy with a collective good argument, you appear to be comfortable only with some sort of the individual putting money away for their own retirement argument. But the outcome is close enough to the same, at least for the moment. Clearly, if a movement were afoot to give individual participants more control over their contributions, we would part company. I don't see that happening in the immediate future. We do disagree on Medicaid and I presume, given your argument there, would disagree on Medicare. I'm quite comfortable with arguments for universal, single payer health care, as you know. So I would prefer an individual tax based system which covers everyone, rather than the employee based model we currently have. I see decent health care as a right of citizenship, which will, undoubtedly, cause you to grind your teeth. (Hmm, if pressed, I might even be willing to argue for dental care under it as well.) As for "entitlement mentalities", I'm less bothered by them than by the suffering which follows from not covering everyone, for instance, for a decent old age or health care. If I have to risk entitlement mentality to make certain everyone is covered, that's a small risk. But then we've pretty clearly established, in our various conversations, you are more the libertarian and I am more the communitarian. Hmm, typed more than I thought I would. Got bored with the World Series.