The European model wouldn't work for the US

[Isa_Almisry]

Kaninchen, fancy finding you here. Off posting on another Europe versus American thread again… I thought you didn’t like these discussions…

She’s a waskalee wabbit.

hmmmm. I see.

No, I don’t buy it either. There seems to be a specialty in these “observations.”

 

[Isa_Almisry]

I don’t know that the European model works so well for the Europeans, either.

-My French friend sent all her [dual citizenship] kids to US universities: she said the ‘free’ universities there wern’t worth attending and dissapproves of the way the French system sorts kids into ‘laborers or intellectuals’ at a very early age.

-Though divorced from her American husband, she still spends a month here every year or two, having her teeth cleaned [French dentists aren’t big on preventative care] and filled [they’d rather just pull 'em]; getting a mamogram and pap smear [her friends at home can’t believe you can just call and get an appointment for such things].

-She’s a business woman who works solo in the architectural antiques trade-- very successful, could be more so if she kept an office staff so that she could better use her own valuable time. She doesn’t, because empolyees there cost between 70 and 90% more than their takehome pay [that is, if she paid $100 a day to the employee, she’d have to send up to $90 additional dollars to the gov’t for pension, etc.] Plus, 8 weeks of paid vacation, etc. Result: high unemployment and a lack of work ethic, especially among the young.

-Additionally, the Euro welfare state seems responsible for the Euro population collapse. When the government and the benefits it can provide becomes your primary concern, there really isn’t much point in building a good marriage or happy family.

In an odd way, the Europeans are more selfish than Americans, not less: They are very jealous of their benefits, fight tooth and nail to protect them. Far more interested in preserving their ‘slice of the pie’ than baking a bigger one. Less prone to have families, too busy looking out for themselves.

I’ve lifted this paragraph from National Review, an admittedly consevative American publication, but not one prone to making up statistics:
“Around the world, single-payer systems keep costs down by rationing care. A Cato Institute study found that in Norway, health care is funded through general tax revenues (taxes consume 45 percent of GDP). But Norwegians commonly travel abroad to avoid long waits. “Approximately 280,000 Norwegians are estimated to be waiting for care on any given day (out of a population of just 4.6 million).” In Britain, “delays in receiving treatment are often so long that nearly 20 percent of colon cancer patients considered treatable when first diagnosed are incurable by the time treatment is finally offered.” Even in France, whose system gets high marks from international raters, bureaucratic rigidity contributed to the deaths of 15,000 elderly people in the heatwave of 2003.”

I’ll take our broken system over their broken system anyday…

The first time I went to Europe after college, I met COUNTLESS numbers of Western Europeans college grads emigrating to the US (and Canada). I asked, having seen practically all of Western Europe (I’ve never been to the Iberian Peninsula, the Riviera and Ireland, Malta and San Marino, but practically everywhere else), so I didn’t see much difference. From Norway to Italy, Austria to Great Britain, the answer was the same: they stated that once you get out of school, you are placed in a nitch where you will stay for the rest of your life. If you want to advance, you have to leave.

 

[Isa_Almisry]

Not impressed. All talk, mighty shy of facts.

On the statement:

What European countries definitely haven’t done is dismantle their strong social safety nets. Universal health care is a given. So are a variety of programs that support families in trouble, helping protect Europeans from the extreme poverty all too common in this country. All of this costs money - even though European countries spend far less on health care than we do - and European taxes are very high by U.S. standards.

Does this include the money spent abroad on health care, as someone posted above?

Btw, someone has posted a comment on the article that effectively sums up Marx inability to practice what he preached.

 

[Isa_Almisry]

I think that what’s obviously wrong with the op is the presumption that there could be anything vaguely wrong with the American way of doing anything that would conjure up a need to find any kind of answer whatsoever, never mind in the silly and very, very naughty ways of Europeans - which American contributors to the thread have so generously reiterated . . . . . where, indeed, would we naughty and very, very silly Europeans be without such sage observations?

In the Soviet Union.

 

[Isa_Almisry]

Naughty is kind of an old world word, don’t you think? Sounds European. I think most Americans would translate that “nasty”. I’m just saying.

naughty is more condenscending.

She admits, she is “European, very.”

I don’t think ther is any reason for Europeans to feel insulted just because other countries don’t want to do things their way…

But the Europeans are the height of sophistication and the end of civilization. Just ask them.

-and since you brought it up, don’t chortle too strongly about our “sage observations” regarding European models- after all, without our penchant for pointing our when you’ve been “naughty” and “silly,” your “way of doing things” might still be dictated by your king or queen.:tiphat:

or Fuehrer or Duce.

 

[Brendan]

…when you’re not too busy queuing at the border to see American doctors, that is.

I live across the Detroit river from Canada, and yes there is a lively industry here to supply things like MRI’s to those who live in Windsor, Ontario.

My wife is Canadian, and she can even continue to see the Dermatlogist she had in Windsor. You see, he set up an office in Detroit as well, because the Ontario system would only allow him to see X number of patients, any more than that, and OHIP ( the Ontario Health System) won’t pay him. So he has an office in the States where the patients who would rather pay him themselves than wait in the government queue.

Also, about 1/3 of the nurses in our hospitals are Canadian. They’ll commute across the border because nurses are paid about twice as much here ( and they closed half the hospitals in Windsor)

 

[Isa_Almisry]

…and affordable education for children from low-income families. Not much money to be made there.

Actually the industrialists created the public education system in the US for the purpose of creating factory fodder.

 

[Isa_Almisry]

I live across the Detroit river from Canada, and yes there is a lively industry here to supply things like MRI’s to those who live in Windsor, Ontario.

My wife is Canadian, and she can even continue to see the Dermatlogist she had in Windsor. You see, he set up an office in Detroit as well, because the Ontario system would only allow him to see X number of patients, any more than that, and OHIP ( the Ontario Health System) won’t pay him. So he has an office in the States where the patients who would rather pay him themselves than wait in the government queue.

Also, about 1/3 of the nurses in our hospitals are Canadian. They’ll commute across the border because nurses are paid about twice as much here ( and they closed half the hospitals in Windsor)

To be fair, there is a brisk business in medication across the border (Canada>US).

 

[steveandersen]

I should probably let this go, since it is getting off topic, but it is such a glaring error that I can’t ignore it…

for example…here is something from a lecture titled “The French Revolution and the Socialist Tradition: Early French Communists”

source: historyguide.org/intellect/lecture19a.html

Did you read you own quote?

The French Revolution did not directly produce the 19th century ideologies known as socialism or communism.

Which is precisely why I said your mention of proletariat and bourgeois in reference to 1789 was anachronistic.

But I’m not sure what that has to do with the OP?
Other than trying to equate universal coverage with communism.

Modern universal heath coverage was introduced in Europe by Bismarck; he took existing insurance arrangements and expanded them.
I don’t think “communist” or even “socialist” when I think of Bismarck.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Actually the industrialists created the public education system in the US for the purpose of creating factory fodder.

This strikes me as unlikely. Certainly, in the 19th Century, for example, an education would not be necessary for “factory fodder”. For most of the 20th Century, only very basic reading and writing would be needed for 'factory fodder". Manifestly, in both centuries, many whose only education was public education, escaped the fate of being “factory fodder”. If industrialists created public education for that purpose, they let all the brightest ones escape. Allowing public elementary education to dovetail into secondary education, and secondary education into public college education was self-defeating.

Sounds like a myth to me.

 

[cynic]

Actually the industrialists created the public education system in the US for the purpose of creating factory fodder.

If only we could go back to those times

 

[Oscarthecat]

Did you read you own quote?

The French Revolution did not directly produce the 19th century ideologies known as socialism or communism.

Which is precisely why I said your mention of proletariat and bourgeois in reference to 1789 was anachronistic.

Yes, I read my own quote- did you happen to read the two sentences immediately following the one you cited?

Here they are again…

“But the Revolution did provide an intellectual and social environment in which these ideologies, and their spokesmen, could flourish.*** In other words, the history of the socialist tradition is something more than the words of Marx and Engels***.”

(emphasis in bold, italics, size, and color added)

There you go- I think it is pretty clear that it is not anachronistic to recognize that the tension between the social classes in the FR influenced the development of later socialist ideology. Therefore, as it predated the historical emergence of socialism as a distinct ideology, but clearly influenced the development of socialism, it is considered part of the socialist tradition.

I don’t know how I could possibly be more clear, but if you still don’t get it, then PM me or start a new thread.

But I’m not sure what that has to do with the OP?
Other than trying to equate universal coverage with communism.

at this point, this has less to do with the OP and more to do with you attempting to nitpick me

…but to bring it back around to the OP- my original point was that maybe one of the reasons that many europeans and americans have such different views on the scope and function of government is that we have different experiences, as nations, with the royal class.

Although they did eventually shrug off being ruled by royalty, the national image of many European countries is still tied to their long histories of being “subjects” governed by royal figures.

The national image of america, on the other hand, was defined by our rejection of royalty. You might say that it is part of the american political/social tradition, because the same basic theme is found in the experiences of earlier immigrants to the Americas, like the pilgrims, who sought to live free outside the reach of their monarchs.

“Subjects” serve the king and are taken care of in exchange.

“Citizens” participate as equals in society, and take care of themselves and one another freely.

So, European social programs tend to lean toward this sense of being dependent upon the government, just as they were dependent upon their monarchies- Americans don’t want to be dependent on anyone, or at least they didn’t use to want that, and so maybe that’s why American social programs tend to lean toward making people less dependent and more self-reliance.

 

[Isa_Almisry]

Did you read you own quote?

The French Revolution did not directly produce the 19th century ideologies known as socialism or communism.

Which is precisely why I said your mention of proletariat and bourgeois in reference to 1789 was anachronistic.

But I’m not sure what that has to do with the OP?
Other than trying to equate universal coverage with communism.

Modern universal heath coverage was introduced in Europe by Bismarck; he took existing insurance arrangements and expanded them.
I don’t think “communist” or even “socialist” when I think of Bismarck.

You should, in this case: Bismark started the whole think as a direct way of prying the masses from the SPD, the socialist party of pre WWI Germany, the largest party in Germany at the time and the most successful socialist party in the World until the Bolshevik revolution. At the declaration of war the party split, those against the War becoming the KPD, the communists of Germany. After WWII, the two parts reunited. When East Germany fell, the communist all became “socialists.”

And btw, the age 65 is also a legacy of Bismark: he didn’t expect many to live that long.

 

[Isa_Almisry]

This strikes me as unlikely. Certainly, in the 19th Century, for example, an education would not be necessary for “factory fodder”.

Some basic skills were still required. Like speaking English (but not too much).

For most of the 20th Century, only very basic reading and writing would be needed for 'factory fodder". Manifestly, in both centuries, many whose only education was public education, escaped the fate of being “factory fodder”.

Andrew Carnegie was one, but that doesn’t mean the aim of public education was to produce millionaire industrialists.

If industrialists created public education for that purpose, they let all the brightest ones escape.

Only if you’re a Marxist.

Allowing public elementary education to dovetail into secondary education, and secondary education into public college education was self-defeating.

Until the “High Movement” convinced them it would boost economic production, it didn’t happen.

Sounds like a myth to me.

Look it up.

 

[Kaninchen]

I live across the Detroit river from Canada, and yes there is a lively industry . . . . .

Yes, indeed, I was referring to the picture of the coughing and spluttering, fevered masses of Canada, assembled at the border to beg medicines from their generous neighbors that I’d envisioned from your many posts on the subject.

 

[Shoshana]

Yes, indeed, I was referring to the picture of the coughing and spluttering, fevered masses of Canada, assembled at the border to beg medicines from their generous neighbors that I’d envisioned from your many posts on the subject.

Bas, bad canadians!

 

[Isa_Almisry]

Yes, indeed, I was referring to the picture of the coughing and spluttering, fevered masses of Canada, assembled at the border to beg medicines from their generous neighbors that I’d envisioned from your many posts on the subject.

…did you envision the ones who sayed on their side of the border dropping dead in line (sorry, queu) for care. Happens.

 

[Thais]

…and affordable education for children from low-income families. Not much money to be made there.

It appears you did not understand the point I made. I listed different kinds of products/services (e.g. education, health care vs. military, police). Introducing a market target qualifier such as “education for low-income families” does not sprout a new kind of service. All external factors being the same, the best quality education, like any personally purchasable service, will continue to be provided by the private sector, no matter who is receiving the service.

I never suggested stop helping the poor, I like the current mainstream conservative idea in the US: vouchers. It not only helps the poor receive their education, but better than the “generous liberals”, it gives them a privilege that only the rich currently have: choice.
This could actually help low-income individuals get out of this position and be able to pay to send their own children to whatever schools they want later, instead of perpetuating dependency on government schools for their descendants.

 

[cynic]

. All external factors being the same, the best quality education, like any personally purchasable service, will continue to be provided by the private sector, no matter who is receiving the service.
.

Only for those who can pay for this service. Affordable education provided close to the cost of supply is not going to be a profitable business, and will not attract much investment.

.
I never suggested stop helping the poor, I like the current mainstream conservative idea in the US: vouchers. It not only helps the poor receive their education, but better than the “generous liberals”, it gives them a privilege that only the rich currently have: choice.
This could actually help low-income individuals get out of this position and be able to pay to send their own children to whatever schools they want later, instead of perpetuating dependency on government schools for their descendants.

I agree. However vouchers are not consistent with the hard-line idea that education is the “responsibility of the parents”, because it still requires the redistribution of wealth.

 

[Thais]

Only for those who can pay for this service. Affordable education provided close to the cost of supply is not going to be a profitable business, and will not attract much investment.

Of course. I’m talking about services costing whatever their market value is, no less.

I agree. However vouchers are not consistent with the hard-line idea that education is the “responsibility of the parents”, because it still requires the redistribution of wealth.

As far as I understand the current proposition of school vouchers, they would go to the poor and rich alike. So it does not cause redistribution of wealth directly, other than what its underlying progressive tax system does. However, the tax system already exists and will continue to exist independently.

Also, I do not know if even the farther right people, such as Libertarians, totally repel any wealth redistribution, period. At least the Fair Tax being supported by some of them sounds really awesome and yet it still is progressive.