At 04:42 PM 28/09/00 -0400, Mike wrote:
>Socialists do not see how multiplying the number of private product
>manufacturers and distributors actually makes life better, more
cooperative and
>more efficient for all, which is why they simply DO NOT GET capitalism.
Yesterday's `Age' newspaper in Melbourne, Oz, has this interesting
observation:
=============
http://www.theage.com.au/news/20000928/A20198-2000Sep27.html
The US health industry is run for the benefit of the
pharmaceutical industry, doctors, private hospitals, lawyers
and the insurance industry.
For the individual, most of the cost of medical interventions
comes in the last couple of years of life. Even those Americans
in the most comfortable class during their working lives and
who have had access to the most opulent private insurance,
are generally uninsured and dependent on government
Medicare at the end of their lives when they need the health
system most.
And yet, not only have they paid private health insurance
during their working lives, Americans actually paid more in
taxes to finance Medicare (aged) and Medicaid (poor) public
health programs than Australian taxpayers pay in order to
provide a universal public service that, at least until 1996,
was designed to cover the whole community and still covers a
far larger proportion of the population than the restricted US
public health system.
[...]
Even for the rich, the best chance of civilised end is in a
system where everybody is prepared to make the public health
universal and the government's first priority, because
everybody understands that is the system where they are
most likely to end up.
================
Another interesting set of figures on childbirth patterns following the
demographic transition:
================
http://www.theage.com.au/news/20000928/A20197-2000Sep27.html
But here's something that is not so well known, and even less
understood: in poor countries, higher-status women have fewer
children; in rich countries, higher-status women have more
children.
In Australia, 37 per cent of children live in the 20 per cent of
families with the highest gross family income and two thirds
live in the top 40 per cent of income earners (ABS figures). And
what is the most important determinant of family wealth?
Having two incomes. In the rich West, more equality leads to
more babies. Norway has a fertility rate of 1.85, Spain's is 1.15.
So what of all those stories (and cartoons) blaming selfish
career women for falling birth rates? They are wrong, that's all.
=======================
Damien Broderick
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