Intermission
Well, with the completion of the last of my assignments last week, which had been totally consuming, now comes a period of relative rest. Come March, I will find myself again in the dark recesses of various libraries and corners of the internet working on another round of essays. But for now….freedom. So now what?
‘In other news’ I’ve finally gotten around to reading “The World is Flat,” the most recent book by the ever insightful Thomas Friedman. This book, like his others, tackles and tries to demystify our ever changing globalized world and how the past four years have made the world flat…on page 87 so far. He is neither a hardcore capitalist, nor a British Labour Party socialist, but somewhere right in the middle…perhaps a true compassionate conservative.
Which brings me to my next point…British government. It strikes me that despite the similarities between English and North American cultures, it stops there, at culture. The government here is completely socialist, I can’t beleive how much faith citizens here place in their bureaucracy. Maybe its apathy by a discongruent people, but in no other place, save Japan, have I witnessed a government mentality that acts as a shepard to its sheep. But we are not sheep!!!
Living here has made me appreciate America’s (relatively) hands-off government ideology. Now I can truly understand why the tea went into the harbor.
Comments(120)
Hands off government? Noel, Bush is tapping phones and sifting through personal information databases for potential terrorists. Meanwhile HMOs/private insurers are bleeding the people dry, jobs are being outsourced to god knows where and the Army is stretched thin…
Hands should be anywhere but off to prevent America from collapsing on itself.
Then again Canada won’t be far behind.
What Bush is doing is widely regarded as illegal, and his administration is anti-american in its “interpretation” of many laws. Well, I respectfully disagree that it is the government’s problem to fix healthcare and outsourcing issues. Government should exist merely to protect the fundamental rights of its citizens. The right of working at a call center is not a fundamental right. As for health care, what we need is prevenative health, which again is not the government’s job, but up to us, the citizens.
Well Noel, I think healthcare is something that concerns the citizens, it is a societal choice. Canada and Britain’s people chose to put equality of economic and social rights before all else. It doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily better but honestly if you were poor wouldn’t you be happy to know that this is one thing less to worry about?
Americans have it rough in terms of education and healthcare – it’s for those who can afford it simply put.
And outsourcing well you are right, it’s not a government issue, but corporations I think have an ethical responsibility towards the people who work for them (i.e. Americans) as well as their consumers. If the bottom line is profit then it only benefits a marginal few, and usually the money gets lost in capital flight. Outsourcing is another way of saying capital flight in my opinion. As such government does have a valid reason to intervene. But then again I’m not the one studying business…
I disagree again with you on outsourcing. Capital flight is not happening in the USA, capital flight is when capital leaves, never to return, this happened in Russia when the state sold off its factories to private parties who simply sold the assets and moved to the US and Britain. This is truly a bad thing, but is not at all what is happening in the US. Companies that outsource overseas are merely importing a good or service that cannot be competitively acquired domestically. Ultimately, this increases consumer welfare and benefits society; it is better than the company having to go into bankrupcy becuase it is not competitive; in which case everyone loses. To produce a generic machine screw here is simply not an efficient use of money and resources. Highly-paid workers are better off doing more advanced tasks, not sitting in front of a machine pressing buttons. In any case, I realize it is a sensitive issue, it isn’t easy for a assembly line worker to just be suddenly trained to be a software engineer. I think Japan has it right, Japan has large commercial federations that among other things have extensive training mechanisms in place so when an employer must make layoffs, they work with this business federation to train layed off workers to do something else. Thus, it seems a nice alternative to simply firing workers, instead the company pays a small price to aid in the retraining so that they can be productive elsewhere and worth their salary.
I think you missed my point on healthcare by the way, I don’t think it is a social right to be healthy. We as individuals are responsibe for our own health. If you eat at McDonalds everyday and become an obese diabetic, why should the government pay for your healthcare? It goes back to the distortion of our healthcare culture, it is focused on ‘disease care’ as opposed to ‘preventive care.’ Again, I realize it is a sensitive issue as most people do not live healthy lifestyles and someday become sick. The reason healthcare is expensive is precisely because so many people screw up their bodies with unhealthy lifestyles. Because it exists in an open market, the price is set by what consumers will pay, which not surprisingly is a lot. The people that get screwed are those who live healthy lifestyles but then need treatment for broken bones, accidents, having babies, etc etc (things beyond personal control.)
I’m not defending the American system, I think it is wrong as well, though I don’t think it has much to do with the government. Government tends to screw things up, haven’t we all realized this by now?
Kudos on the outsourcing thing it made a lot of sense.
Well I agree we are responsible for our own health but it’s hard to make good choices when there’s deliberate misinformation on behalf of corporations (i.e. McDonalds) concerning their products.
Perhaps you never noticed but in Japan McDonalds actually put out signs saying their stuff was healthier than traditional Japanese food, this is after the impact of SuperSize Me, who did not get extensive press coverage when McD threatened the media to pull out it’s sponsorship.
Government makes the rules and we choose government so choose one that’ll operate in the interests of human rights and social equality rather than a corporate lackey. I think government can have an essential role in furthering human rights if pressured by the people enough. Just look at many Latin American countries. They’re the ones making demands for changes in including social benefits to globalizing economies.