| "A problem doesn't have to have a single cause; in fact, most real world problems don't. I think it's a good idea to cut spending. I also think it's a good idea to distribute wealth." We are already redistributing wealth through taxes and social programs. "But the fact is that most of them started well-off and got richer." Citation? "And it's also a fact that it is easier to earn a million dollars if you already have a million dollars." It's also easier when you have the mindset of someone that is successful. Poor parents pass on poor decision making to their kids. "So you don't mind if they take 35% by force, but 39% is looting?" When did we ever talk about percentages? I seriously doubt that all of the social programs you are talking about would only be a matter of 3%. "As for your anecdotal long lines in Canada, I'm guessing that option would look pretty good from your cardboard box, dying slowly of liver failure." I guess it gives them hope. If the waiting lines are so long that you die before you get care, it doesn't really matter. "But you've indicated you're immune to bad luck, that you could always find a place willing to hire a good developer even in the middle of major layoffs and even if you need to take time off every day for chemo. Good for you. But what do we do with all the people who don't have your skills, training or work ethic? What do we do with the losers? Let them die in the streets?
What do we do with them?" How do we stop our hospitals from being flooded with people that don't really need care? There needs to be some system in place to force people to only go to the hospitals when they absolutely need it, or the system will eventually collapse. Nobody seems to want to think in the long-term, which is dangerous. |
If you Google 'economic mobility' you'll come up with a lot of citations supporting the idea that most rich people come from families in the upper reaches of the economic spectrum. Here's a particularly good study that got a lot of press a couple of years ago: http://www.economicmobility.org/reports_and_research/other?i... . Keep in mind that I'm not saying no one goes from being poor to rich, only that it's a minority of the wealthy. One reason that it may seem like there are more is that those stories are more compelling and so get more media attention (who wants to hear about the upper middle class doctor's kid who became a millionaire?), and because Republicans focus on those stories in their campaign rhetoric to deflect taxation on the wealthy.
It would be terrible to die waiting for treatment; fortunately that doesn't happen any more often in Canada than it does in the free-market US (where, until the recent health care reform, insurance companies could arbitrarily drop sick patients altogether).
And contrary to whatever ideas you may have about hospital life, they're really not all that pleasant. Most people stay away from them unless absolutely necessary, to the point that a lot of people (heart patients in particular) don't go when in fact they should. No doubt there are some hypochondriacs who waste doctors' time, but they are hardly justification for throwing up our hands at helping the truly sick who greatly outnumber them.