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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Koligman who wrote (9953)	10/1/2009 1:21:46 AM
From: i-node	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

And as for your 'richer/poorer' comment, what do you base that on? Stuff I read shows the gap between rich and poor is wider than it's been for many years, with income gains at the very top dwarfing everyone else..... This is, of course true, but there is no mutual exclusion. In NO WAY does it suggest the poor aren't getting richer. In the United States, the poor have a higher standard of living today than ever before, and it is by a very wide margin compared with, for example, the 70s (a period which wasn't chosen arbitrarily). Business gets bigger, and the wealthy do get wealthier. But the poor today have multiple TV sets, cable television, air conditioning, multiple automobiles, many own their own homes, they have cell phones, cell phones for their kids, DVD players, dishwashers -- all the things that define our standards of living. So, what's the problem here? The rich are getting richer, but as a by-product, the poor are, too. Which makes sense. When the rich get richer, they create jobs for the poor. Let me give you a real life example. When I was in college, a friend of mine was majoring in marketing and they just almost had to roll him out of college in a barrel. He wasn't particularly dumb. He just didn't try real hard. But he could sell sand to a Saudi. So, out of school, he got a job at a small company called Walmart. Today, he is a VP at that company and has more money than you or I ever will. The Waltons are filthy rich. But my old buddy benefited in his own special way. And Walmart has a million other employees who would have no place to be were it not for those filthy rich Waltons (not doing as well as my old friend, but better than they might have been, nevertheless). The Waltons are the Left's favorite punching bag, but the reality is they provide huge numbers of jobs for people who otherwise would not have a job. I think it is great Bill Gates made a fortune. Because he gave great opportunities to thousands of people -- not all programmers. I have a nephew that makes a damned good living training people on Microsoft software. A history major who might have been limited to teaching high school, otherwise.

To: John Koligman who wrote (9953)	10/1/2009 7:06:58 AM
From: Lane3	3 Recommendations Respond to of 42652

Why all the complaints about docs being squeezed? Because the squeezing of doctors that you're proposing is artificial and seemingly punitive, not the market's doing. When programmers get squeezed, it's the market doing what the market is supposed to do. The market will shift programming work to whomever and wherever the work can most efficiently be done. If some political authority were manipulating programmer salaries, I'd take exception to that. But what is happening to programmers is healthy in our system. Sure, individuals stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time get hurt just as buggy whip workers once got hurt. But the system and the individuals in it adjust over time and it works.