Totally wrong. "Number of uninsured" has been the basic standard since at least the '92 campaign. Commie.
And that's related to a BUNCH of gvt. decisions. And maybe a few personal ones, too. No, seriously, the gvt. could do alot of things to create healthier lifestyles.
Agreed. The government can do a good bit but when schools contract with Taco Bell to provide school lunches because kids wouldn't eat the healthier food the school cafeteria was previously providing (an actual local situation), we have a problem. You can't force people to eat what they don't want to eat.
I won't quarrel with this point. That is not the important number. To me the critical number is how many people don't have insurance because they truly can't afford it. If that number truly is in the 5 million range, then it shouldn't be all that hard to provide insurance. In fact, either the Bush or Kerry plans would have been more than adequate.
WTF; Dude, I worked 36-hour shifts, busting my ass to pay for a mortgage in Bergen county that I couldn't afford, expending a savings effort that took a lifetime to accumulate, to have timely access to a commute into a city which I could not stand, to be in a position where if I got sick, "at-will" contracting meant my family didn't have sh!t, preventative, non-emergency care-wise. Either a system reflects a society starting out with the premise that all of its citizens have value/society value presupposes that assumption, or it does not/is not that society. In many ways, the struggle in America has been along these two strands; one says that you have worth when you demonstrate worth to the society as it configures itself around those who "demonstrate" worth; the other says you have inherent worth as a member of society. These two strands have been in conflict with each other for a long time. With the ascendency of the legal, artificial corporate person, the value of demonstrating worth - in the main, now, to those corporations - has also ascended. While the notion of human beings, of American citizens, having inherent worth by definition is losing, maybe has lost, the battle for minds, and for hearts. Enjoy.
Easy. Just look at England. The Royals get the tax breaks, and so they invest in the economy and in jobs and that is why England is such a jolly land.
You didn't have to live in one of the most expensive places in the country, work in a monster city, etc. Life would have been much better, with more affordable everything, in many other places. I'm on your side when it comes to providing care. But it is another thing entirely to say that everyone should live in an expensive area and have all the other perks as well. There are tons of very reasonable, very affordable places to live. No offense but don't complain that you can't afford to live in a city you hated.
I didn't - and don't - hate NYC; I hated the commute. I went to where the work was; sorry that you think that that means I have less right to pretty much everything else because I go to where the work is. How...sad. Best thing is that I've made myself perfectly impervious to that type of thinking as expressed in the States, among governments state and federal.
Could we please focus back on Europe? Here are some numbers I serached for another Thread: So from numbers US military would be a bit smaller than EU's, but more modern. That should equal the size. A United European military would not make us stronger militarywise. Nevertheless, it would make the idea of Europe stronger. What good is a country without troops? It helps forming Europe from an alliance to a nation, and strengthen the European Identity in the population. untill the 90s when we spoke about the EU we spoke about economy. Now we start speaking about money, military, being as big as the US,... The EU as it is now can only exist with a strong America. But then again, how was the Us founded? with a weak america? C'mon...
The Euro is at a new high, and Europe is calling for the US to take steps to bolster the dollar. Which would mean doing something about our trade and budget deficits. Hah!! Don't they know that the Bushies are positive actors, not members of the reality based community!
They're actually thinking right now that if they invade and conquer Europe, we could study that forged reality while they dangle Euros newly minted in sh!t over an imprisoned Chirac's nose for years...
Ireland is the best place to live in the world, according to a "quality of life" assessment by Economist magazine
I'd rather put my trust in the UN Human Development Index if you don't mind, it incorporates more than economic factors: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0778562.html
quoting from the article I posted Researchers took into account not just income, but other factors considered important to people's satisfaction and well-being. They included health, freedom, unemployment, family life, climate, political stability and security, gender equality and family and community life. So it's not that the Economist considered only economic factors, right the contrary I'd say. Surely it's not bible for me (and being agnostic it's not that the bible etc. etc.) it was just an interesting article.
Fair enough. It's just that I'd rather put my trust in the UN than in a commercial magazine when it comes to rating quality of life that's all.
Britons reject Blair's closeness to the US By Andrew Grice, Political Editor 17 November 2004 Tony Blair's "shoulder to shoulder" support for America is rejected today by a majority of British people, who believe it is more important to have good relations with European countries. A poll by NOP for The Independent found that 64 per cent of people think that having good relations with Britain's European Union partners is more important than with the United States, while only 25 per cent believe the relationship with the US should take priority. The findings are a setback to Mr Blair and may embarrass him on the eve of tomorrow's visit to Britain by Jacques Chirac, the French President, who wants Europe to become an alternative centre of power to America. Although Mr Blair is determined to act as a "bridge" between the US and EU, he vowed during a visit to Washington last week that Britain's strong bond with America would continue for as long as he remained Prime Minister. Despite public scepticism about the EU, people would rather Britain keep closer to Europe than America. The poll's results will be seen as evidence of hostility to President George Bush in Britain and opposition to Mr Blair's decision to back him over Iraq rather than pursue a "European solution". There is better news for the Prime Minister on other fronts. According to NOP, Labour (on 39 per cent) has opened a commanding nine-point lead over the Tories (30 per cent), with the Liberal Democrats on 20 per cent, enough to give Mr Blair a majority of more than 150. Labour is up three points since month's last NOP/Independent survey, the Tories down four points and the Liberal Democrats down one...
Unless real change takes place, fundamental change, this may be true... The American dream is fading - and the future belongs to Europe The United States has passed the high point of its success and is doomed to decline due to its internal weaknesses Mary Dejevsky 03 November 2004, p. 35 As yet, they are just straws in the wind, fragile harbingers of change as liable to be blown away as to settle. But if a growing minority of observers are right, more and more such straws will soon be wafting across the Atlantic and the incoming President will need to do more than brush them dismissively off his lapel. For half a century now, each US president has faced a more or less predictable slate of foreign policy conundrums competing for his attention. In no particular order, they have included the Middle East, Russia and its satellites, China and its neighbours, the Indian subcontinent - and whichever regional war the US is currently fighting. Europe - fractious, self-absorbed and arrogant - has hardly registered on the White House radar. What has Washington's recent Europe policy really amounted to? Reluctant and thankfully brief interventions in corners of former Yugoslavia, laced with complaints about Europe's own failure to act. A touch of French-bashing here, some gentle courting of so-called "new Europeans" there, scornful forecasts about the credibility of the euro - and all topped off with flights of grand rhetoric and lavish anniversary receptions to lubricate an ever less substantial North Atlantic alliance. Sometime soon, though, the US will have to wake up and formulate a Europe policy. Its old assumption that America represents the future of Europe and a model - desired or inevitable - for its development needs to be drastically revised. It could even be that the old and new continents are set to change places. In the past half year, three supremely qualified analysts have quite independently reached similar conclusions. They deserve to be taken seriously: firstly, because their arguments run against a well-established consensus; secondly, because all have lived and worked as well as studied on both sides of the Atlantic, including Britain and continental Europe; and thirdly, because in their own fields they are all empirical analysts with impressive records. Emmanuel Todd, whose After the Empire sees the eventual decline of the United States implicit in its social divisions, was among the first to predict the demise of the Soviet Union from the facts of demography and the economy on the ground. Anatol Lieven, whose America Right or Wrong identifies an American nationalism that he sees in the context of the European nationalisms of the past, has unmatched experience of other cultures. Lastly, Jeremy Rifkin, whose The European Dream compares the economic and cultural boasts of the United States against the statistical and European reality, is that rare phenomenon: a management guru on the left of US politics, who eschews jargon, questions assumptions and feels as comfortable in Europe as in the US. There is also a fourth reason - I admit it - for giving credence to these studies, which is that I happen to agree. My own conclusions from living and working in Britain, continental Europe and the US concur in almost every detail with theirs. Todd's thesis is that the United States has already passed the high point of its success and is doomed to decline because of its internal weaknesses. These include its half- hearted attitude to empire, the contradiction implicit in its claim for the universality of its model with the de facto racial and social segregation it practises at home, and the narrowing of its cultural horizons. Falling American life-expectancy, disparities in health and the rise in poverty also come into his equation. Lieven argues that what Americans regard as the unique, and generally superior, "American way" is but a form of nationalism, identical in many ways - good and bad - to the nationalisms of pre-war European states or the former Soviet Union. The Republican Party, he suggests, would anywhere else in the world be called the Nationalist Party. He dares to see a malign aspect to the flag-waving and monolithic patriotism of the media that followed the 11 September attacks. The landmark aspect of this book, however, is neither the wealth of detail he draws on nor the political incorrectness of much of what he says, according to today's American canon. It is rather that he views the United States as just another country, subject to the same weaknesses and influences and capable of fitting the same analytical categories as "abroad". Lieven takes the United States down to size. No wonder he had difficulty finding an American publisher. Rifkin's title, The European Dream, shows that his premise, too, includes a healthy rejection of American "exceptionalism". As the most wide-ranging analysis of how Europe works, however, this is the study that should worry the White House most. For while many flaws in the US system are well-rehearsed, few economists acknowledge the achievements of the EU and few politicians believe that Europe could ever be coherent enough in its ambitions to challenge the power or popular appeal of the United States. Rifkin hazards that the European Union could supply an alternative model of development. Whether the new EU constitution comes to anything or not, he contends that Europe is already far more of a success than its constituent countries recognise, and potentially the next superpower in the making. The common currency is now stronger than the dollar. France, Germany and others may have flouted the borrowing conditions, but not by much - look at the debts the United States has run up. Growth in much of Europe may be sluggish, but at least it is not swollen by credit and wishful accounting. Anyway, he argues, most of the accepted economic indicators favour US definitions of success. The world of the future, he implies, may contemplate the two models and prefer European measures of contentment. Rifkin's argument is so compelling because it uses simple facts and figures to challenge existing US claims of supremacy. He is also a man with a mission - not only to convince Americans that they must notice renascent Europe, but to convince Europeans that they share important values and that their project is something to be proud of. For, deep down, he fears that Europe and its destiny are in danger of passing each other by. Even as the US model becomes unsustainable, he worries, those Europeans hitherto most resistant to the American model are finally capitulating. Thus, despite their superior productivity indicators, shorter working hours, superior health systems, more benevolent social safety nets, more merciful judicial systems and more successful diplomacy, even the French and Germans are being bamboozled into following Britain in adopting more American free-market ways. Don't do it, he is telling us. You are on the right track. Europe has a valid model of its own which is more suited to the world of the future than the fading American dream. And we should not do it: those straws in the wind for the incoming American president are omens that we Europeans should heed, too. http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/mary_dejevsky/story.jsp?story=578838
The "other side": By JAMES K. GLASSMAN (a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and host of www.TechCentralStation.com) for the WSJ November 5, 2004 During his first term, Europe saw George W. Bush as a fluke. He had won in 2000 without a majority, gaining the White House chicanery or outrageous luck, and he had been a disaster as president. Surely, given the choice of the urbane John Kerry, Americans would not re-elect this hick. But, of course, they did. Tuesday, Mr. Bush won a second term by four million votes on Tuesday, becoming the first president since Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 to gain re-election while picking up seats in both houses of Congress. In the Senate, the Democratic leader was defeated and Republicans widened their lead to 10 seats from two. Mr. Bush won despite 1,000 American deaths in Iraq, an economy that is generating new jobs at a tepid pace, a faltering performance in the presidential debates and the nearly unanimous opposition of the media. It was a triumph, and Europeans needs to recognize that its effects will probably endure. The Republican party of Ronald Reagan, which followed a half-century of Democratic dominance in American politics, is consolidating its power. The best advice I can give Europeans is: Live with it! President Bush is no fluke, and there's no wishing him away. The good news is that Mr. Bush isn't devious or unpredictable. He's entirely open and obvious. A major theme of his campaign was that he does what he says... ...The American economy is growing roughly twice as fast as Europe's. President Bush's re-election will put more pressure on EU leaders to consider adopt more business-friendly policies; it is evident that Bush's embrace of free, competitive markets, low taxes and light regulatory touch underpin the U.S.'s widening comparative advantage in the biotech and pharmaceutical sectors. In fact, the greatest challenge Mr. Bush poses to the security of European leaders is not in foreign policy but in economics. The president's top goals in the second term are to overhaul the U.S. tax and Social Security systems. If he succeeds, the gap between America's growth rate and Europe's will widen, and political pressure in Europe for free-market reforms will grow. Jeremy Rifkin, an American polemicist of the left, has just written a book that extols the "European Dream" -- the good life of long vacations and "sustainable development." But this is precisely wrong. Europe is living in a fool's paradise, with huge demographic imbalances, untenable health care systems, rising crime, and high unemployment. Economic growth of 1% or 2% a year can't support the welfare state politicians have promised, and Europe can't possibly afford the economic costs that an adventure like Kyoto entails and they will have to address the heavy cost-burden of "health care for all." My own guess is that, over the next few years, the complacent EU nations (such as Germany and France) will be pushed hard by the aspiring EU nations (such as Ireland and Poland) to build a Europe that looks more like George Bush's America. And it won't be a fluke.
More Rifkin: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1352197,00.html ...After a thousand years of conflict and war, the nations of Europe emerged from the shadows of two world wars decimated: their populations maimed and killed, their ancient monuments and infrastructure lying in ruins and their way of life destroyed. Determined that they would never again take up arms against one another, the nations of Europe searched for a political mechanism that could bring them together. In 1948, at the Congress of Europe, Winston Churchill pondered the future of a continent racked by centuries of war and offered his own vision of a European Dream. "We hope to see a Europe where men of every country will think of being a European as of belonging to their native land, and ... wherever they go in this wide domain ... will truly feel, 'Here I am at home'," he said. Today, less than a half century after its founders began to dream of a united Europe, 60% of EU citizens say they feel very or fairly attached to Europe, while a third of Europeans between the ages of 21 and 35 say they "regard themselves as more European than as nationals of their home country". The World Economic Forum's survey of European leaders found that 92% see their "future identification as mainly or partly European, not national". This extraordinary change in how people perceive themselves has occurred in less than half a century... ...The EU constitution, which was formally signed last month in Rome and will be taken up for review and ratification by the member states over the next two years, is the first governing document in all of history to attempt to create a global consciousness. The constitution emphasises a clear commitment to "sustainable development ... based on balanced economic growth", a "social market economy", and "protection and improvement of the quality of the environment". The constitution would also "pro mote peace ... combat social exclusion ... promote social justice and protection, equality between men and women, solidarity between generations, and protection of children's rights".