I don’t agree with you on this one, Jim. I do agree that Moore hates America, but I don’t think he’s really interested in redistributing wealth or actually following through on any of his calls for socialist-style reform. His actions indicate to me that he likes bilking mindless rubes out of their hard-earned union paychecks. He owns mulitple expensive houses, which tells me he enjoys and perhaps feels entitled to personal luxury.
A person who truly hated capitalism and wanted socialism would work in a substantive way to create such a system. Moore’s actions and choices demonstrate that he favors, in practice, capitalism, free expression and a free market.
If he renounced all his worldly goods, that at least that would be deserving of a little respect. Based on his actions, I would say that Michael Moore is nothing more than a conman who has found a great scam. I don’t believe he cares about any particular cause, except his own.

Yeah, I thought about that, but you know what I think would happen if Moore was ever faced with losing his personal wealth to the US government?

He’d simply move to Canada.

I agree with Belcatar.  I think moore realizes that his biggest audience consists of pissed off activists that feel entitled and are envious of anyone who has more than they do.  If moore really believed in socialism, he would have moved back to Flint instead of wealthy and white Torch Lake (near Traverse City), where 7 digit homes are the norm. 

I’ve often said that it’s easy for a millionaire to preach the benefits of socialism.  They can afford to.

Oh, make no mistake about it . . . Moore is a socialist down to his very core . . . just like the liberal left in Hollywood. The very essence of their belief system is rooted in social/economic justice for the little guy. That’s what Moore is all about.

However . . .

The one common thread linking all these people together is their thinking . . . it’s always in the abstract . . . never based in practical reality. That’s how socialism is seen by socialists . . . in abstract terms. Don’t bother them with all the conflicting details, because it forces them to confront and/or deal with unpleasant realities they just can’t handle.

When you see someone like Oliver Stone supporting the likes of Fidel Castro, Stone is supporting the illusion, not the reality.  And so it goes with Moore.

Being a wealthy socialist is never a part of the discussion because in the abstract, socialism and personal wealth can coexist. In concrete terms they never say how this can be simply because they don’t want to ponder the dilemma — the result would be a belief system overload.

So, like Moore, they live the life of capitalists in denial, all the while touting the virtues of socialism, and never reconciling their dilemma. Inside the mind of every socialist is that denial mechanism—the refusal to accept that some things can never be.

This is why people like Moore seem so hypocritical to most of us. In fact, they are just that, but this is seldom, if ever, realized because that denial mechanism kicks in negating the opportunity of any process of logic to unfold.

And denial certainly plays a part in Oliver Stone’s view of Castro.

And yes, if the U.S. government actually implemented an efficient system of confiscating and redistributing wealth, all of Hollywood would head to parts unknown to protect their wealth, Moore included, thereby proving some realities are larger than others. And they would all still be socialists, but only in the abstract.

Oh, make no mistake about it . . . Moore is a socialist down to his very core . . . just like the liberal left in Hollywood.

No doubt about that.  It’d be very interesting to find out just how much of his money he keeps in America.  Most of the ultra-left/socialist crowd tend to keep their money off-shore.  Most famously, George Soros - who pines for great change in America but neither lives here nor keeps his money here.

Socialism’s allure has always been it’s utopian view of a society.  What people don’t realize is that it fails miserably in practice, either co-opted by natural human greed or by general indifference of its citizenry.  Whenever one of the primary founding principles of something is to rely on social and peer pressures to maintain a high standard of conduct you know it is looking at an ideal and not a reality.

One other point regarding Moore’s statement about out economic system being ”unfair, unjust, and not democratic.” Moore is dealing in the abstract. Ask him for a specific alternative, and watch him studder. All you’ll get is more of the same because Moore doesn’t delve into specifics. All he does is bitch about capitalism. He cannot demonstrate that any other system anywhere in the world can compete with our system. Marx got it wrong, and still Moore doesn’t get it.

Moore is so typical of socialist thinking . . . that because one system isn’t perfect, another must be. How shallow.

The theme i referred to that exists in all my films is the economic system that we live under. It’s unfair, unjust, and not democratic.

On that point, I personally totally agree with him. I’ve been thinking that for years now, and on every new passign day, the facts and events just comfort me in this thinking.

But that doesn’t mean at all what you deduce:

He wants the government - or rather, a far left government - in charge of everything.

Maybe Moore would like that. But thinking that the current economic system (being the american one or any other similarly developed countries (Canada, UK, France...etc) we live in is unfair and far from perfect, doesn’t imply that the solution is to radically replace it with a government only driven economic system.

This is stupid in fact, to think that a government only driven economic system would be a solution. We know it isn’t. The solution is far more complicated, like life.

As of the U.S Health Care system, while it’s defendable to have a free market for health cares that are not urgent and are not question of life or death. The emergency health services should be free (paid by taxes), accessible to anyone (whatever insurance you have) and this in every single hospital in the nations. As far as I understood, this is not the case (and this is a shame for the U.S).

What most americans seem to still not have understood is that life is complicated and that neither a free market only based system nor a totally socialism system work. As everything in this complicated work, this is far more complicated than that and while a free market ecenomic model can work just perfectly in some area, it’ll fail miserably in others (replace “free market” by “socialism” to get an equally valid statement for socialism).

An example of how bad can a totally free market economic system can get to in some areas, is the reale state market of today. You get stupidly high prices with equally stupid financial solutions.
An example of how bad a totally socialism system can get to is what you saw in the USSR before the system had fallen.

But believing that the free market capitalism ecnomic system is the ultimate solution to everything is equally stupid as thinking that a totally government driven economic system is the ultimate solution to everything.

In fact that’s why even in U.S there are services that are not on the free market, like the fire department.

iFrodo, show me where I said that our free market economy should be free market *everything*.

You can’t, because I didn’t.  You assume because Moore’s an extremist who wants to socialize everything, and I disagree, I must want to privatize everything.  I’m not a complete idiot, but thanks for assuming I am.

Government is required to perform *some* services.  Others are FAR better served by free market capitalism.  Some things even require regulated-therefore-limited markets.  The trick is to figure out what works best and apply that, not to default to socialism every ever-loving time.

On that point, I personally totally agree with him.

Honestly, I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone that says the US economic systems is NOT unfair, unjust, or not democractic. Of course, that is also what makes it so strong. Its a competitive system filled with sharks and chum. In any competitive system there are losers and winners and its that way in the American economic system. I would take issue about it being unfair though. Balanced toward those with establish wealth certainly, but also not necessarily stacked against the entrepenuer.

What most americans seem to still not have understood is that life is complicated and that neither a free market only based system nor a totally socialism system work.

You are so far offbase with that comment I have to say you have absolutely no idea or clue what most American’s think.

Fact is, most American’s would fully support a hybrid system where certain things are provided for by the government and private health insurance picks up the rest. For example, I know many people support government care for the disabled and persons under 18 or over 67, with people aged in between responsible for their own healthcare. What American’s are against is the all-or-nothing attitude that many, including Moore, display.

In fact that’s why even in U.S there are services that are not on the free market, like the fire department.

For the reasons you stated?  Nope.  Not even close.  There is a big difference comparing services provided by and ran by local government than services provided by and ran by the federal government.  Really, you can’t even begin to compare local police and fire departments to federally run healthcare.

That said, the reasons these services exist is because there are certain things the American people have decided they are willing to pay for via taxes.  Universal Healthcare is not one of those and really, will never be anytime in the near future.

Really, I’d like to thank you for pointing out our (Americans) myopic view of healthcare and for introducing the concept of hybrid systems.  I’m sure none of us had ever considered that possibility before.

iFrodo, what’s “fair”?  I’ve asked this before, what yardstick does one use to measure fairness for a few million people?  Describe a system in which all citizens and participants involved would accept that the system is “fair”.

@prozyan
Ok right, I generalized too quickly. Of course I don’t know what most americans think. I reacted like this regarding the post I commented about and also the general impression this site give.

Reading the various articles, and this one in particular, I get the impression that at least those who are behind this site, believe that the capitalism model is the solution for everything… Of course I’m sure that they don’t thin that extremist in reality, but that’s the impression that give this site reading the articles.

Btw, thank you (sincerely) for your comment, that is reassuring me that the american are just like anybody else (what I thought already, but this site made me doubting a little).

@crichton
As I said in my post, the world is complicated, and there is no miracle solutions. There are simply NO existing “fair” system, and I think there will never be… But that doesn’t mean the current existing systems can’t be more fair.

iFrodo, thanks for the effort, but what’s “more fair”?  How does one judge something to be “more fair” than something else?  Some people want castro and chavez to be the judges of that, some want Bush.  Bizness owners have a different version of fairness than employees do. 

Fairness is a myth perpetuated by politicians and activists who seek to build an entitlement mentality en masse to bully along their agendas onto people that don’t agree with them.

In fact that’s why even in U.S there are services that are not on the free market, like the fire department.

Of course there is no law banning you from hiring someone to keep an eye on your house and make sure it doesn’t burn down.  Hell you could even provide a hose and truck if you could afford it.

Same with police.  Its not illegal to hire a bodyguard for your personal protection, a security guard to protect your property, and hell you can hire yourself a private investigator to look into something for you.

In most cases this would be overkill, but you’re allowed to do it.  And you are wrapped up in believing that everyone in here is wrapped up in this all or nothing mentality.  And that’s just not the case.  Its an argument against the all or nothing mentality of socialists like moore.

Posted by Buzz on 07/25/2007 at 10:39 PM (Link to this comment | )

“And denial certainly plays a part in Oliver Stone’s view of Castro.”

Stone and Castro… no better example really.

Pro Castro leftist murders JFK in large part due to JFK’s hostility to Castro.

Because Stone likes JFK and leftists… and Castro, Stone’s mind can’t process what really happened… so he goes into conspiracy thought blaming everyone in the US he doesnt like (Nixon, CIA, LBJ, whoever)… if not the US itself… and ends up liking Castro more as a result of his follower murdering someone he liked / JFK.... He ends up way far away from where he started for absurd reasons....

Posted by iFrodo on 07/26/2007 at 02:06 AM (Link to this comment | )

Maybe Moore would like that. But thinking that the current economic system (being the american one or any other similarly developed countries (Canada, UK, France...etc) we live in is unfair and far from perfect, doesn’t imply that the solution is to radically replace it with a government only driven economic system.

The US, Canada, UK, and France all have the same ecconomic system.

Cuba? Not so much.

I get the impression that at least those who are behind this site, believe that the capitalism model is the solution for everything…

You probably get that impression because we hold up the success of the capitalist system when it works as proof that a socialist approach isn’t the only viable solution.

So many people come here so confused about American healthcare.  They act as if we don’t know there are problems with it and are shocked when we say that UHC is NOT the solution.  They are shocked when we don’t agree to scrap and condemn the system in place now and herald the coming of a new golden age ushered in by Universal Health Care. 

As Buzzion pointed out above: Its more of a reaction against the all-or-nothing attitude that Moore and so many others than come here display.  You’d be hard pressed to find anyone that doesn’t say the American Healthcare system has flaws, some serious.  You’d be just as hard pressed to find any knowledgable American that would say the system is so broken and dysfunctional that it should be scrapped wholesale.

In other words, we’re tired of being lectured by people about how we should do things...especially when the majority of these people have no real idea of what is going on.

Stone and Castro… no better example really.

There’s just no way to see Castro as some sort of heroic figure unless there’s a denial mechanism running full throttle.

And Moore has that same mechanism.  That’s one reason all of his arguments are so simplistic . . . to the extent a 7th grade book report has more substance.  It’s really pathetic . . . and I mean that with due empathy.  It’s a very dysfuntional child-like belief system.

@crichton For example I consider the French society (well i take this example because I’m french, I’m sure it works with other countries) more fair than the U.S one. As in the french society, even if you lose everything (i.e: Your job, your wife, your house..etc.), you can get helps from the government.

This helps are basically:

- Minimal insertion revenue (RMI) (480 Euros/month)
- Free (really free for you at least, as you don’t pay any taxes in that situation) universal medical coverage (CMU),
- Housing allocation (to help you get a home)
- If you have children at your charge: children allocation
- Houses at cheaper price ("social houses").
- And on some cities like Paris, you can use the public transport system totally free of charge.

I don’t know what helps you get in U.S if you lose everything and you don’t have unemployment compensation. Can you expect to have a minimal revenue? Do you have a medical coverage of any sort? Do you have helps to help you to keep a home? Do you have help for your children?

Let’s take a concret example:

You have a nice life, a wife, 4 children, a nice job, a nice house.
One day, your wife die in an accident. You surpass this hard event by being optimistic considering that you still have a nice job and a nice house.
Then yourself you get an accident some years later a lose your legs and arms. Because of that you lose your job. And some moths/years later you still haven’t found a job (nobody want to employ you considering your handicap) and your unemployment compensation has worn out. You have to sell your house because you don’t have anymore resources. Then some months/years later all the money you got for your house is over.

Can you expect any helps from the U.S government? If yes, what are they and at which moment in this story it can start to be requested? Do you get a free medical coverage? Do you get helps for your children?

@Prozyan
Ok I understand perfectly that you are tired to hear people that just see the world in black and white. I’m also tired of that.

So maybe that could be a good idea for the people who are driving this website to give their opinion on what are their possible solutions to the flaws of the American Healthcare System? I’m sure they have an idea, and that’d be far more constructive and interesting than just defending the pros of the current american system.

*sigh*

iFrodo, if you don’t know the answers to your questions, what business do you have telling us how things are, should be or anything else?  You know nothing about most of the folks that write for and comment on this site, and you know even less about the welfare/Medicaid/Medicare system in America.  In fact you seem to know almost nothing about this country at all.

Somehow this complete lack of knowledge hasn’t stopped you from dispensing your wisdom.

Perhaps you should go learn the answers, and then debate the merits of UHC vs. for-profit with us.  It;s an idea, anyway, and one I hope you decide to take.

As for your comment about what this site should do?  1. It’s not your site.  Don’t presume to advise.  2. We already have discussed flaws and solutions to the current healthcare system.  You seem, like so many other things, to have missed the MANY discussions about how to fix our system.

this website to give their opinion on what are their possible solutions to the flaws of the American Healthcare System

I wasn’t aware this website’s intention was to discuss or even think of ways to fix American healthcare.  Here all this time I thought it was to expose the half-measures and half-truths and outright lies Michael Moore loves to present.

@JimK

I may have missed the discussion on how to fix it. I’m sorry but if it’s not in the front page, I can hardly read all the comments there are here, I don’t have enough time for that.

About learning the answers, I expected this website to help me in that purpose...I had expected the articles on the frontpage of your website would have helped me understanding better the U.S healthcare system, with a different and interesting point of view than the Moore’s one.

That’s why I suggested an articles on the flaws of the U.S system with the possible solutions. It can’t be that hard to do considering that you say you had many discussion (I guess in the comments) on them, so you’d basically have to make a summary of that discussions in a clear and concise article. That’s only a suggestion, and even if it’s not my website (I never pretended it were), I still have the right to give you suggestion, then you can do whatever you want with them.

P.S: You don’t have to be that rude when answering to me, I just made a suggestion. You don’t like it, then ignore it, but it doesn’t serve this site credibility to answer like that to someone that just made a suggestion.

I wasn’t aware this website’s intention was to discuss or even think of ways to fix American healthcare. Here all this time I thought it was to expose the half-measures and half-truths and outright lies Michael Moore loves to present.

And isn’t it a way to do that when it comes to expose half-measures and half-truth about Sicko? For me it’s part of this purpose, because it helps people understand the WHY the exposed half-truth are half-truth (in fact I think it’s mandatory to be able to understand fully the WHY).

For me when you are doing a critic of a documentary, you not only have to show the why the conclusions and solutions he propose are true, but also give an idea on what could be better.

As otherwise, in the case of the UHC, the pending question is:

OK, UHC is far from being perfect,and have many flaws, but according to Moore, the for-profit U.S system has also many flaws. Then are the flaws of the for-profit U.S system “better” (with les grave consequences) than the UHC flaws? And Why?

Maybe Moore would like that. But thinking that the current economic system (being the american one or any other similarly developed countries (Canada, UK, France...etc) we live in is unfair and far from perfect, doesn’t imply that the solution is to radically replace it with a government only driven economic system.

This is stupid in fact, to think that a government only driven economic system would be a solution. We know it isn’t. The solution is far more complicated, like life.

But that is the entire point here.  Moore has built a career upon taking extreme (or manufactured) examples and evidences, using them to paint a distorted image of America, and then campaigned for what essentially amounts to an exclusively-federal solution for every single one of those problems.

THAT IS THE ENTIRE REASON THIS SITE EXISTS, TO DEMONSTRATE THAT MOORE IS USING HALF-TRUTHS AND HALF-LIES (and sometimes all-lies) TO SELL YOU A PIE-IN-THE-SKY SOCIALIST BILL OF GOODS.

I’m on the verge of writing a Ten Commandments list of Ways Not to Defend Michael Moore.  And near the top of that list will be Thou Shalt Not Say That Pure Socialism is Not the Only Answer.  It doesn’t matter what other mixes of ideals lies along the spectrum.  Moore’s campaign is for one of pure federal management.  Moore’s campaign is the one being argued against.  Arguing against Moore’s campaign is not an argument against ANY AND ALL instances of ANY government intervention on ANY level (which reminds me of another candidate for that list: Thou Shalt Not Use Local Government Examples to Defend Federal Government Solutions).

I may have missed the discussion on how to fix it. I’m sorry but if it’s not in the front page, I can hardly read all the comments there are here, I don’t have enough time for that.

You don’t have to read every discussion in detail, just look for specific posts talking about the health care system.  You can even click to filter posts BY CATEGORY on the right side of the website to look at ONLY posts regarding Sicko, or even regarding only HMOs.

About learning the answers, I expected this website to help me in that purpose...I had expected the articles on the frontpage of your website would have helped me understanding better the U.S healthcare system, with a different and interesting point of view than the Moore’s one.

Why?  This is not a health care advocacy website.  There is nothing in the title to suggest that.  The purpose of this website is to expose Moore’s intellectual dishonesty.  Luckily for you, despite this specifically stated purpose which has nothing to do with what you’re looking for, there are posts on here with examples of success in the for-profit system.  These are counter-examples intended to demonstrate that Moore’s portrayal of the system is a distortion of the reality many of us experience on a daily basis.  Even luckier for you, Jim even started up one or two threads that ACTUALLY DID talk about ways to correct the system.

So, in short, this site actually has taken steps to provide you with precisely what you’re asking for, EVEN THOUGH it does not fall within the stated reason for this site’s existence.

You’re welcome.

It always seems naive to me when people claim devotion to the economic and political values this country was founded upon.  Those being so much more complex than “We fought a war to establish, among other things, our right to have a free market economy.” That argument does not really hold up in the first place, since many of the economic restrictions imposed by Britain were then imposed by our own federal government on the states.  The problem had more to do with representation and autonomy than “we wanted a free market.” What we wanted was a self-governed market. 

It may seem nit-picky, but no more so than faulting Michael Moore for referring to direct deposit as mail.

Posted by iFrodo on 07/26/2007 at 09:32 AM

Yes to most of your questions. There is free medical care for poor, housing allowances and public housing (which sucks, btw, much like in France… I’d go for the allowance and rent outside of the public housing), food allowance, a cash stipend available that is higher if you have children… and in a normal situation to keep a house, unemployment insurance if you loose your job.

As to this one:

One day, your wife die in an accident. You surpass this hard event by being optimistic considering that you still have a nice job and a nice house.
Then yourself you get an accident some years later a lose your legs and arms. Because of that you lose your job. And some moths/years later you still haven’t found a job (nobody want to employ you considering your handicap) and your unemployment compensation has worn out. You have to sell your house because you don’t have anymore resources. Then some months/years later all the money you got for your house is over.

Can you expect any helps from the U.S government?

A little. You’d be entitled to some early social security benefits, state disability, and for a short term, unemployment.. via the government but they may not be enough to keep a middle class house (but more than enough to buy food and pay utilities). This kind of problem is something handled by the employer through private insurance. At almost every professional level job your offered life insurance, supplemental life insurance, death and dismemberment insurance, and disability insurance. I carry all of them myself. They hardly cost anything. 

So if your employed wife died you’d be paid out on three of the above via her’s. If you then lost legs and your job as a result, you’d be paid out on two yourself. You’d probably end up with a million something dollars if you each had $75k a year jobs… and put in the average insurance elections… That should give you enough to pay off the house and buy a lot of time to start working on finding a new line of work… The state also offers low cost and free job training and a college and university system…

Actually iFrodo I am surprised you didn’t chime in on this thread http://www.moorewatch.com/index.php/weblog/vacation_on/

Most of the people posting here were not in France when the “Killer Heat Wave” hit, so I’d be curious as to the reaction from someone who at a minnimum lived in that country.  Is this just one of those prices you pay for having a socialized system?  Has anything been done to correct that problem or if it gets real hot in August will we once again see reports of thousands dead?

Plus there are a couple other things here which seem to need a bit of a reality check.  First off, there’s no reason people should feel entitled to live in a middle-class house.  It’s not some God-given right to live in a 4-bedroom, especially if you’re the only resident.  I think expectations like that can be reasonably tempered without getting into ridiculous discussions about people living under a bridge and drinking Woolite.

Second, people earning even lower-middle-class incomes can do better than they are at present.  But they, and pretty much every income level above them, generally tend to live above their means.  If we as Americans borrow ourselves into oblivion, of course a catastrophe is going to bankrupt us.  Obviously, fiscal responsibility will not solve all our health care problems, but how much better off would we be if we educated people on how to be smart with their money, borrow less, and learn to live without a plasma screen for a couple extra years?

My wife and I are in what I might call “circumstantial debt” (as opposed to years of ridiculous spending), but we have found ways to tighten our belts, live within our means, and slowly pay down our debts.  We hope to be debt-free soon, maybe one day own a house to raise our family, but God help me if we ever have a credit card for anything other than my business expenses.  And the end result of that is that this kind of saving and frugal living will allow us to fund our future kids’ college, and to have a healthy, comfortable retirement with no debt and plenty in the bank.  In fact, it is my personal goal not to accept a single penny from the government after retirement: no SS, no Medicare, nothing (it may not be there anyway, so you all might be well-served to plan for this as well).  Wish me luck!

but also give an idea on what could be better.

WE DID. One of the posts is linked from the giant box of text at the top of the page. Stop expecting everything to be spoon-fed to you.  Look around, and don’t complain if you “don’t have the time.” The information is there if you want it.

Posted by maxiguess on 07/26/2007 at 11:48 AM (Link to this comment | )

It always seems naive to me when people claim devotion to the economic and political values this country was founded upon. Those being so much more complex than “We fought a war to establish, among other things, our right to have a free market economy.” That argument does not really hold up in the first place, since many of the economic restrictions imposed by Britain were then imposed by our own federal government on the states. The problem had more to do with representation and autonomy than “we wanted a free market.” What we wanted was a self-governed market.

Not to be nit picky but the economic side of liberalism was pretty well articulated… Liberals (Locke coined the phrase and it appears in Smith) argued that “Life, Liberty, and Property” were all interdependent… Let one be taken and eventually the other two will be… So I think your off on this one…

The phrase appears in the Articles of Association / Declaration of Colonial Rights as is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_Colonial_Rights

I think the Colonies did want a free market… just like Jim argued… for the reasons he argued… you can’t have property rights with a King trampling all over property rights…

Unless you’re going to argue that Locke, Smith, and the continental congress were being unclear by what they meant by property… in their books, resolutions, et cetera....

Most of the people posting here were not in France when the “Killer Heat Wave” hit, so I’d be curious as to the reaction from someone who at a minnimum lived in that country.  Is this just one of those prices you pay for having a socialized system?  Has anything been done to correct that problem or if it gets real hot in August will we once again see reports of thousands dead?

The problem started because of a lack of air conditioners in homes.

When my family moved to northern Nevada from the deep south, imagine how surprised we were to discover almost no one had air conditioning.  You only need it during July and even then only for 2 to 3 hours a day.

Unlike France, however, the doctors in northern Nevada didn’t go on vacation at the same time.

Well I have a story about what happens when people expect the government to give them free stuff. You end up with a situation like this:

I’ve been teaching summer school for the past couple of weeks. It’s great money - 20 bucks an hour - and I’m having a good time doing it as well. Unfortunately, I won’t be keeping a single penny of my paycheck.
Before I even got a chance to look at the pay stub, the government took over 100 bucks from it. I paid federal tax, state tax, medicare, and Maine State Retirement, which takes the place of Social Security.
Medicare is the one that irks me the most, because I have no idea how I would go about taking advantage of it, assuming that I can. I’m probably not even eligible. So the government took money from me without disclosing how I might take advantage of the programs that money supposedly funds.

As for the rest of it, the car registration is due.

Total money - $710.00
Total money I get to keep - 0.00

Thanks, Government! I love working for nothing! It’s my pleasure to serve.

The above story is true. Keep in mind, this is before the advent of Universal “Free” Healthcare. I wonder how many weeks I’ll be working for free when our Fearless Leaders roll that one out.

But the issue was more that the colonies wished to have a market separate from Britains, not entirely different from it.  What our government imposed on our own market was similar to what the king had, and became more so as we progressed from farm/slave economy to a industrial/wage economy.  It doesn’t seem accurate to claim that our forefathers were fighting for a free-market economy the way we are using that term here.

Of course it does.  Financial liberty is directly tied to personal liberty.  Even if it was not the economic mindset of the time, The Wealth of Nations demonstrated the evolution of free-market economy as a natural result of the evolution of Western democracy.  You might make the argument that the founders were not SPECIFICALLY fighting for a free-market economy, and that would not be entirely wrong.  But neither were they fighting for the right to drink Coca-Cola, since it did not exist at the time.  Nonetheless, if I cracked open a can and said, “this is what The Founding Fathers died to bring me”, you would understand the principle behind that statement.  The right to choose a tasty soft drink is a natural extension of the right to live free of unreasonable government intervention.

Just look at the Bill of Rights and see what kind of ideals are enumerated there.  The government can’t tell you what to say.  The government can’t tell you who or how to worship.  The government can’t tell you you’re not allowed to have a gun.  The government can’t stick soldiers in your house.  The government can’t take away your property without compensation.  The government can’t deny you a fair trial.  On and on and on.  This was not just a fight for our own version of the same government England had.  While we based our government on the Parliamentary model, there are clear distinctions where we specified clear differences in principle between the rule of a monarch and the rule of a representative republic.

So while the market forces may not have been a specific target at the time (I’m not speaking from knowledge here, I am simply stipulating your point for the sake of argument), the principles and ideals for which they fought lead us directly to the kind of economy we enjoy today, one which is governed by our own choices and not by a federal mandate.

Posted by maxiguess on 07/26/2007 at 04:18 PM (Link to this comment | )

But the issue was more that the colonies wished to have a market separate from Britains, not entirely different from it.

What are you talking about? What does that even mean? Is this some kind of ideological thing about why people have revolutions (like Marxist claptrap about revolutions from the top / for self gain?) that no one outside the closed circle of the ideology would understand (and/or consider valid)? Because, severing from the British market wasn’t exactly going to help the colonies. Severing the King meddling in their contract acts with special taxes (on products to and from the colonies) would. In their minds, they were simply standing up for the same rights they’d have in the UK. After the English civil war the King tended to not meddle that much in domestic markets…

What our government imposed on our own market was similar to what the king had, and became more so as we progressed from farm/slave economy to a industrial/wage economy.

The US government hardly had any influence on the market until the progressive era… a hundred years after the revolution… The federal government didn’t regulate the market or products or do just about anything regarding trade other than protect it with a Navy.

It doesn’t seem accurate to claim that our forefathers were fighting for a free-market economy the way we are using that term here.

Yeah, they had no idea that they were quoting economic liberal ideas from John Locke and Adam Smith in their lists of grievances with the King…

Can anyone interject here. Did this guy actually make any arguments I might have missed because this seems like a bunch of words (mush) that says nothing.

Most of the people posting here were not in France when the “Killer Heat Wave” hit, so I’d be curious as to the reaction from someone who at a minnimum lived in that country. Is this just one of those prices you pay for having a socialized system? Has anything been done to correct that problem or if it gets real hot in August will we once again see reports of thousands dead?

In fact this kind of situation have nothing to do with a socialized or privatized health care system. And I don’t think any french would blame it on anyone else then the government. The doctors, hospitals and people working to help old people (being in a public instituation or on private pensions houses (which is the case of most of them)) did their best (and in fact did a great job but couldn’t deal with the situation alone, they required a government help (this would have been equally true with a for-profit system)). So we blame the government who didn’t deployed a special plan to address this issue.

Indeed, this issue has to do with the fact that France is a country which wasn’t used to that kind of high temperature. For example we don’t have much air conditioned places (even in work places, it was quite rare). And the, mostly private, pensions houses (don’t know how it’s called in U.S) where the old people mostly go, they mostly didn’t have good conditions to deal with that kind of exceptional event (mainly because they didn’t have air conditioning).

Even if the pensions houses are mostly private, this kind of special conditions require a special national wide plan, which can only be done by the government (to be sure it’s really national wide), but they didn’t. YES the french government made a very grave mistake to not take this high temperatures issue sufficiently seriously and to not deploy a special plan to avoid these deaths (like offering air conditioned spaces for all these people during the hot period).

Hopefully I hope the government have learned the lesson and will never do this mistake again. Not that it doesn’t seem to be french specific that a government doesn’t react correctly to weather issues like that, the U.S government also have done a miserable job on the New Orleans catastrophe from what I heard. And that your health care system is private didn’t help (of course because as I said, in that special cases the nature of the health system have very little to do and it requires special actions that can only be done by the government).

I make this parallel, because blaming the french health care system for this hot summer situation in France, is like blaming the U.S health care system for the poor dealing of the New Orleans catastrophe while both required actions from the government to be properly addressed, and in both cases the respective governments failed miserably to react adequately and quickly enough.

I’m rather baffled by the contradiction that arises when you point out that governments are slow and inefficient in responding to catastrophes, and at the same time campaigning to have the government subsidize the catastrophic portion of health care.  How can you say the government is the “only one” who can handle this sort of thing immediately after citing two instances of the government not being very good at handling it?

Wasn’t the heat wave in temperatures that weren’t even above 100° F?  That’s 37.7° C.

Wasn’t the heat wave in temperatures that weren’t even above 100° F?  That’s 37.7°

It was above, it was around 40ºC when protected by a shadow, more under the sun.

I’m rather baffled by the contradiction that arises when you point out that governments are slow and inefficient in responding to catastrophes, and at the same time campaigning to have the government subsidize the catastrophic portion of health care. How can you say the government is the “only one” who can handle this sort of thing immediately after citing two instances of the government not being very good at handling it?

But does this mean that the government is good for nothing? This hot summer situation is hopefully an exception, from what I’ve seen in my life of the french government reactions against other catastrophes, this is the first time I had seen and heard of such a miserable reaction.

But don’t worry, in term of medical cares quality and the general service of health care, I think our health care system works fine, at least as good as, if not better than, the most of the other developed countries. Also as a son of doctors, I never heard lot of critics on our system from them, on the contrary they always told me we have a good medical system and that we can be proud of it, and this even if my father is himself working on a private clinic.

The problem on our system is that, for now, it costs far too much to the government (because people abuse of it, like doing bosom aesthetic surgery and then asking for refund to the health care insurance with false statement of their doctor about bosom cancer background (as it’s the only way to get refund on that case).
Yes, that may sound stupid that our system didn’t check on these cases before accepting the refund, but that’s because the system was thought with the idea that the doctors would be trustful, and so if a doctor say someone had a bosom cancer, they believed him. This is these kind of abuses that drove our health care system to the enormous and abnormal deficit and debt it has today.

But hopefully the latest government, have already started to correct the system and the deficit (but of course not the debt), and the deficit has already been reduced significantly (by its half), but not as fast as the government has predicted (government prediction are often too optimistic anyway ;) ). The current one seems to have some new ideas on how to reduce faster the deficit… We will see if they work.

So you’re saying that you have people abusing your system and that’s costing you a lot.  Now how do you solve that?  Why more government oversight of course.  So you’ll have additional bureacracy soaking up the money you save by making sure people don’t abuse the system.

And it outlines the precise problems that we are saying will crop up in a UHC system, and people are swearing up and down, oh no, that would never happen.

I think Michael Moore is a con man.  He is willing to twist facts in order to get what he wants, which is money in his pocket. He gets rich off of the misery of other people.  I strongly wonder how he is able to sleep nights.

You have a nice life, a wife, 4 children, a nice job, a nice house.
One day, your wife die in an accident. You surpass this hard event by being optimistic considering that you still have a nice job and a nice house.
Then yourself you get an accident some years later a lose your legs and arms. Because of that you lose your job. And some moths/years later you still haven’t found a job (nobody want to employ you considering your handicap) and your unemployment compensation has worn out. You have to sell your house because you don’t have anymore resources. Then some months/years later all the money you got for your house is over.

Regarding this bit from iFrodo… someone else can verify here… but didn’t they put in some law that you can’t discriminate against someone with a handicap? Including that then you’d not be able to be fired for it?

but didn’t they put in some law that you can’t discriminate against someone with a handicap? Including that then you’d not be able to be fired for it?

For the discrimination to refuse to hire someone because of that. Even if there is a law, as it’s very hard to be sure that the guy has been refused because of that (the companies never admit it of course), it’s sadly not rare to see discrimination.

Gambling the cost of a lawsuit against the cost of an unattractive prospect for your business can blow up in your face big time.  Just ask Lee Iacocca.