IsabelleWell, in France we have public health care and you can still choose which doctor you want to see, and which hospital you want to go to! All our best specialists are covered by public health care.
You left out the ‘when’ part. Can they go see the doctor of their choice
whenever they want? My friends consider this very important. After all, if one thinks one has cancer or has a painful chronic problem, they would want to be able to seek out a specialist and begin treatment at once.
What do doctors get paid in France? I watched a movie once called ‘Shallow Grave’ and it was set in Scotland. In it, one character was a doctor and she lived with two other roommates. I was amazed. Why would a
doctor of medicine need to have roommates? In the US being a doctor is a very lucrative, very respected profession and as such, many many people strive to be one, so colleges have their pick of the best of the best. The schooling is long and rigorous and expensive. I used to work at a scholarship service for African students and those students who wanted to be doctors didn’t come to the US for medical school. They went to England. Reason? There was less schooling in the UK. I’m not sure what that means, but it didn’t sound very reassuring.
Penthelisea It's called solidarity. I live in a solidary community and I am thankful for that. I'm willingly paying a whole lot of taxes when I consider what I get in exchange for it: we have insurance against unemployment, we have health insurance, my children can go to public schools who deserve the name educational institution and so on.
I, personally, and my family would perhaps be financially better off if we had to pay and organize all insurances and other benefits on a private basis instead via a big solidary community. And our system is far from being perfect. But I am willing to pay more into the system than I get from the system because I know many people are far worse off than we are.
I'm aware that the system is far from being perfect and injustices happen here, too. But maybe the basic structure if living in a solidarity community is one reason for the lower violence in (most?) European countries than in the US.
During the recent student strikes in Paris, my friends were shocked to find out that once you get a job there it’s almost impossible to be fired. They were wondering, how in the world does anyone change jobs, change careers or anyone who isn’t from France and perhaps wants to live there, get a job with laws like these?
Coming from a capitalist society, you won’t find many people who want a lot of government involved in the daily running of the economy and general living. One idea of America is rugged individualism, taking care of your own, not depending on someone else to do it for you. Again, the right-wing extreme viewpoint is that
not everyone is going to make it, and it is folly to try to make it so. My more religious right-wing friends even quote Jesus, “There will be poor, always.”
The emphasis was on it being made by humans and represented by humans, individuals. Therefore it is at first failable and in the end it comes down to every representative of the state being nothing more than just one person: human, failable, having good days and bad days and being not more "worth" than any other person of the community. And therefore having not the right to judge over another person's right to live.
Yes, they are each
one person, but they aren’t running things as
one person. The system is running things, and people work and take actions
within the framework set up by the system which was designed and agreed upon and implemented by groups of people over the generations. Not everyone was having a bad day when they set it up. Individuals have good days and bad days, sure, everyone does, but the system doesn’t.
KatDoes that mean affluent people are somehow inherently or genetically less crime-prone? Of course not. It means background is one factor in causing crime. Even though it's POSSIBLE to grow up in poverty and turn out fine, that doesn't work for everybody. Poverty is more likely than affluence to produce criminals.
Is more likely, yes. So why is that? People aren’t being put in jail because they’re stealing food to feed their kids or clothes to put on their backs. Poor people see that life can be very very very good if you have a lot of money. They aren’t happy living in a dump and eking out a living, knowing that they might never rise about their economic status and never have what wealthy people have. Some poor people decide – choose – the easier option. Instead of working hard, living within their means, which may not be much, they turn to crime as a quicker way to get what they want.
It's less poor people producing criminals as greed producing criminals. I don’t recall where I read this, but some older person was quoted as saying ‘We was poor growing up, but
we didn’t know we was poor. We had food, clothing, roof over our heads, life was great and we were proud of our hard work’. He went on to posit that perhaps the advent of television helped fuel greed and the feeling of worthlessness in poor people by opening up the world and exposing poor people to the fact that they were
monetarily poor and that having money brought respect and attention and easy living.
BUT is our ultimate goal to point the finger and blame people, or to reduce crime? If it's reducing crime, then we'd better just face the reality that poverty is correlated with crime, and helping more people out of poverty would be one logical way to cut crime rates.
Well, the answer is both. As you say, this is a very complicated issue. Crimes happen, poverty happens, so someone or something must be responsible, so one must
point the finger to the causation in order to ameliorate it.
The classic American view that individuals are responsible for their own actions makes some sense. But it doesn't actually solve anything. To solve a problem, you have to pragmatically deal with its causes.
To
view something doesn’t solve anything, agreed, but if classic American society is set up so that people
are held responsible for their individual actions, then it does. The problem is, when individuals are not held responsible, because people say their actions stem from society or poverty or some great boogeyman, suddenly you have criminals justifying their individual actions as
not their fault.
Boggle boggle boggle.
