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

To: Road Walker who wrote (13789)	3/3/2010 10:51:07 AM
From: Eric	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

RW Again... move to Haiti or Somalia. No worry on taxes for infrastructure. Few if any regulation. Blissful freedom. Or stay in the over-regulated, over-taxed, over-infrastructured US and suffer the dire consequences of your horrific lack of freedom. I was laughing pretty hard when I read your post! Gads.. maybe we should eliminate all traffic laws and better yet all FAR's (Federal Aviation Regulations). My student pilots would be much happier if they didn't have to know all those regs.. ROTFLMAO

To: Road Walker who wrote (13789)	3/3/2010 12:21:03 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

First Tim, it's really intellectually dishonest to partially edit my sentence to change it's meaning. I did no such thing. Doing that would be something like as if you said "Lots of rules have caused all sorts of problems, freedom is what made this country great", and I edited it to say "Lots of rules...have made this country great". That would be changing what you said, but I did nothing like that. "Lots of rules have made this country great" is a statement all but itself, I didn't remove any part of that statement. Its also a statement that isn't modified by the other statements in the same sentence. Ignoring the attack on me from the sentence, and taking the rest of it as a whole it would mean that BOTH "playing by the rules", and "lots of rules" have made the country great; or that "playing by lots of rules has made the country great". I read it as the first, and there is nothing dishonest about that even if you meant the 2nd, the 1st is a very reasonable reading of what you posted. If you didn't make yourself clear that's not my fault. Also the 2nd isn't very different. The first includes "lots of rules have made the country great" very directly. The 2nd basically says the same thing in a roundabout way. If playing by lots of rules has made the country great than having lots of rules is a necessary component.

To: Road Walker who wrote (13789)	3/3/2010 12:39:08 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

So THAT's why we're NOT the richest country in the world! Buttt waiiit, we are the richest country in the world! How do you explain that Tim? We started becoming the richest country in the world, largely because we where freer than most of the rest of the world. In other words we had less rules, or rules that restricted freedom less. That used to be very strongly true, and that's how we became richest in an total income and wealth, and near the top in per capita income and wealth. (No I'm not saying its the only reason, but its probably the most important one, other than the fact that we are the third most populous country contributing to the total income and wealth part, but out large population is also related to our freedom, with people coming here to be free, and people coming here for the wealth that the freedom allowed them and others to generate.) Out freedom in both relative and absolute terms has been slipping recently, so we might not stay number one, but such changes (first in freedom, and then in wealth), usually take a long time to take effect, and the countries closest to us are less free. Germany, Japan, France, and the UK, aren't becoming more free. China has been becoming more free, which has allowed for much greater economic growth than it had in the past. It also has the advantage of having richer countries to trade with and learn from, and it has a much larger population (helping in counts of total wealth and income), but I think it will have to free up more if its going to pass us (esp in per capita terms).