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State vs Private
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message 51:
by
Ian
(new)
Apr 09, 2018 11:16AM
I argue no. There should be a public option for anything that is compulsory, such as education, or something that every citizen could need such s health. I cannot see why the luck of fate should condemn those with little money, especially those who have little money because they start life with a disability. I can understand why some people criticize government run programs, and I think that in the US there is a tendency for mediocre efficiency because most don't believe in the programs. They only work when the population at large believe in them, and there is a mechanism to expose poor performance and correct it.
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Nik wrote: "Should everything become private? What do you think?"As a mother of a severely handicapped son, I was very frightened by the possibility of changing from Government owned and supervised facilities to private facilities where cutting services by obtaining profit would motivate the private investors. There are certain services which I believe should be left in the hands of civil
authorities such as law, police, minimum education, social services etc. etc.
Judith wrote: "As a mother of a severely handicapped son..."Sorry to hear about your son's condition, Judith
Heck no, everything shouldn't become private. It's too expensive for many people. Private is always going to be for profit and not always held to proper standards.
Is private necessarily better than governmental?
In my opinion the answer is, it depends. Government can, in principle, do it better. Here, almost all our electricity network was put in by the government, and also maintained. Then the government sold everything to several power companies that were floated. The previous criticism was that the Electricity department wasted money upgrading lines etc. Now we have lines companies that do "as needed" repairs. The different companies were supposed to provide competition, but they behave more like a cartel, and the price of electricity has increased by something over an order of magnitude over the last two decades or so to ordinary consumers. But the Greens in government regard this as a good thing as it reduces the need to produce more.However, government departments have to be made to be efficient or all chaos eventuates, and politicians, by and large, make awful managers.
Creating an efficient, non-despotic government is about as easy as engineering real world applications of √-1.
Actually, your computer is an application of √-1, although of course you may not realize it. Anything involving quantum technology depends on it.
So what's the solution to the equation? Please don't just say "i".
ψ = Aexp(2πiS/h) is the general form of a wave function, where A is the amplitude, S the action and h Planck's quantum of action. There are also applications in electrical engineering and fluid dynamics. some examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex...
So, creating an efficient, non-despotic government is on par with describing the wave function of an imaginary number? Fair enough.
While the dictatorial government is out of favour, I draw your attention to all the people here who think Biden is doing a great job :-)
I'm not entirely sure that Uncle Joe doesn't believe Kamala is the President. He has called her President Harris several times.
Hardly a sign of efficiency when the President is unaware he is president :-(
Ian said: " I draw your attention to all the people here who think Biden is doing a great job :-)Is that true, Ian? They think the withdrawal from Afghanistan was a great job? They think he's a strong leader? They think shutting down our oil industry overnight in favor of solar and wind energy is great? They think opening our border to unvetted immigrants is a great idea? Exactly what is great about Biden?
Scout, count the number of people here who think Biden is doing a great job then reread my point. You are confirming what i said.
I don't know how people in NZ feel about Biden. Let me Google that :-)
May 31, 2022, Jacinda Ardern had only positive comments after meeting with Biden. https://www.c-span.org/video/?520682-...This is the most recent info I could find. Are the majority of your compatriots in agreement? Biden is wonderful?
I think Jacinda was being diplomatic. I mean, no NZ leader is going to slag off the President.As for NZers in general, I can't say because I don't represent them, but I suspect if you asked most of them you would find that apart from beating Trump, and apart from sending weapons to Ukraine, most would be hard-pressed to state anything he has done. Biden simply has not mounted a high profile here.
re: Health care insurance. I believe it was Ben Shapiro, whose wife is a doctor, who said that the problem with the system is that people want three things - affordability, accessibility and quality, but when government regulates the medical profession you can only get 2 out of 3. If it is affordable, and easily accessed, the quality (and variety of treatment options) is likely to be lower. If it is accessible and of high quality, the cost will be quite high. And affordable, high quality health care is not easily accessed; i.e. not universal.From the medical professionals in my own family, I see that this is true. There is also the shadow problem of the slow doctor drain in the US. To some degree, this is stop-gapped by admitted more foreign-trained doctors into US residencies and hospital staffs, and promoting the option, particularly in general medicine, of nurse practitioners. Becoming a doctor - going into an expensive 4 years of college, 3-4 years of medical school, internship, residency and possibly fellowship so that you can begin a career in your mid-30s that won't be paid off until your mid-40s, working 80 hr weeks subjected to subject-to-change government mandates is just not as attractive a career choice as it had been in the 50s, 60s, 70s, not when technology has opened up so many lucrative career options.
I asked a doctor in our family - "If I called your office today for an appointment, when would I get in?" The answer "Three to four months."
In the OP there is the phrase - "A state is usually richer than any of its individuals"Why is the state richer? You get money in 4 ways:
You earn it
You inherit it
You win it (in a lottery)
You extract it
#4 is how the state gets its money. They extract it from people who earn it, inherited it or won it. I remember Bill Clinton after bragging about a surplus was asked why not give people a tax cut back and he said something like "We uld give it all back to you and hope you spend it right... But ... if you don't spend it right, here's what's going to happen..." Like the government knows better than we do how our own money should be spent.
Here, there is "free" schools, "free" dental care for children, benefits for those who cannot work for some reason or another, "free", although not unlimited hospital care. You are correct that this has to be paid for, and the money is "estracted" as you put it, from those who earn.The question then is, do you want the poor to have children with no chance of education, do you want children working down mines to feed injured parents, do you want health care to be rationed for the rich? The government also provides roads, a police force (do you want law and order to be imposed by the fastest gunslinger?) and a number of other services.
Sure, governments have inefficiencies, but so does the private sector. The problem with government spending includes wastage by those who have little incentive to do better, but the alternative is awful. Have you ever walked down the street and seen someone in the last stages of dying of starvation? I have, and it is ugly. I prefer not to see that in my country, which is why I accept paying my taxes. In fact what makes me maddest about taxes is the complicated rules that go with them, when I feel I may be missing out on somehting because of the compelxity.
Nik wrote: "Is private necessarily better than governmental?"It's not a simple answer. For example, look at the American prison system. It welds a lot of power. The amount of money it takes in and pays to those CEOs and owners is horrendous when you realize how much of that is gained by how we are treating inmates in regards to health and education. They are sued over and over in various states in the USA because of how they fail to meet minimum requirements of health and safety for the inmates. Their employees (guards especially) are paid less than the state pays theirs. We have an area in our state that is one prison after another, run by private companies, not just for AZ inmates but for other states and the feds. The town and the county are paid to let those prisons be established and continued to operate. With some of those funds they built a bigger jail. The negativity of what the private prisons have done or failed to do is overlooked because the various governments are making money off of it. They are big in the lobbying interest especially in preventing criminal law reform. The more beds needed, the more money they make.
However, the State contracts with the private sector for things such as meals and healthcare. AZ has paid a large amount of money in fines because of it's failure to comply with court orders and stipulations that the State signed on to. Our tax dollars at work. It's not working either.
Both are failing. I don't know the answer. I have to believe there is a better one.
Basically, I don't want the government to take whatever percentage of my earnings they want and then probably spend however they want.Right now in my state, people are getting phone calls from the department of health asking about their vaccination status (I know 3 people who got these calls already, didn't get one yet). They are asking if you got the "latest booster." Now there is a lot of evidence coming out that questions the "science" promoting the MRNA shots, the safety issues, especially for younger people - but the government that invested a lot of money in vaccine production is pushing these on you now because vaccines are not like a bottle of aspirin or cough syrup - they are fragile with a short shelf life. So if the current stock isn't used up, its dumped and there will probably effect the production and purchase of a new batch.
So basically the government took tax money, decided to spend it on a lot of stuff we're finding out we might not need - that's money that could have gone to those schools, dentists and hospitals.
Well said, Barbara. No one knows the long-term effects of the Covid shots; it will be years before we know the consequences. I got all the shots and boosters because I wanted to protect my parents in their 90s; otherwise, I wouldn't have gotten them. I really didn't want to get the last one: "The new booster is a bivalent vaccine, which means it contains two messenger RNA (mRNA) components of the coronavirus." Sounded scary. But I took it for my parents. I imagine many others did the same.
