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Originally posted by sgtclub
I know you didn't mean it that way, but this sounds incredibly ignorant.
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Actually, I just predicted what Edwards and/or Kerry would say -- and I'm right.
Quote:
Originally posted by sgtclub
We all want those things, but what the left never seems to grasp is that everything has a cost - or as Milton Friedman coined, there is no free lunch. So the real question is, do you want these things badly enough to pay X for them.
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I and we know full well that things have a cost.
The United States could surely pay the price for those things (i.e. universal health coverage and much higher minimum wage) if the nation was willing to raise taxes significantly and sacrifice a percentage point (or two ) of GDP growth each year. Our economy would be less dynamic, and look much more like Europe than it does now. So, there would be less wealth creation -- and undoubtedly other social costs, expected and unexpected.
I'd be interested in that debate, and in hearing arguments from the right against the programs a bit more sophisticated than imprecations against "socialized medicine". Explain why society should not bear those costs -- and see how many votes that gets you.
S_A_M
P.S. Try representing a pro bono client before the Social Security Administration -- who has been confined to a wheel-chair for years because they haven't been able to scrape up the $67.00 required to pay their share of the cost of the most basic artificial leg (below-knee amputee). Always had to spend it on food/medicine. Tell me there aren't at least "two Americas."
I sometimes pass by homeless guys on streets near my home, and pass them twenties out the window of my Benz as I go by. Do we really live in the same world in any meaningful sense?
Scoff at anecdotal stories all you like, but it reflects a real truth. I have never been so blind or self-satisfied as to believe that I am better or more deserving just because I'm smarter, work hard, and got a few extra years of education. I am, in many respects, damn lucky because life is a genetic and social lottery.
Tag editing courtesy of RT
Thanks, RT -- T.S.
