Why am I doing this? :{
TOTALLY OFF TOPIC.
William Deakin <·····@pindar.com> writes:
> Benjamin Kowarsch wrote:
>>
> > > beers rubbish
> >
> > that's true, but then again outside of Ireland all beer is rubish
> > well, with the exception of Belgium of course.
> Now this is a contriversial point of view. If you like flat warm
> bitter fluid (which I do) then North Yorkshire is a good place to
> live. You have Theakstons, Black Sheep and Samuel Smith's all within
> easy staggering distance. But I agree with Ireland and Belgium also
> being good places too. But it depends whether you fancy a pint of
> stout, larger or bitter...burble..burble...
Of course you could move just south of Florence and North of Rome and
be within staggering distance from Chianti producing areas.
If you like "denser" wines you could move in North Western Italy :)
> Benjamin Kowarsch wrote:
> > ...Economists have identified poor health care as a waste of
> > resources and detrimental to the weel being of an economy. There
> > is a variety of free market models how to better address this than
> > European Big Brother Government style does.
There is one free market model for Health Care that patently *does
not* work.
You guessed it. It is the US one.
First of all it does not provide an equitable coverage (read 100%) to
100% of the population (what is the latest estimate for people having
only Medicare/Medicaid as insurance? About 43 million US
citizens?). Secondly it does it at a cost which makes *all* EU public
Health Care budgets look thrifty. The Italian one included.
In the US the amount of waste due to the red tape introduced by the
necessity of making separate competing agencies (i.e. insurance
companies) communicate with each other is staggering. I still have
somewhere the *pile* of paper that went back and forth from my doctor
office in Berkeley, to the insurance company, to the analysis lab for
a routine blood test. I was astounded. I bet *no* EU country (Italy
included - and this is quite an indicator, being Italy's health care
notoriously wasteful) wastes so many resources for managing Health
Care. So, in the US we have higher costs for Health Care (yes, you
can get the data) and less coverage for a significant portion of the
population. Not a pretty sight.
And yes! I have at least three real horror stories I can tell about
US Health care that would have been treated very very differently in
Europe.
Accusing EU goverment styles of "Big Brotherness" is utterly (no:
umbelievably) ridicoulous. Especially if writing from the US on a
subject where the system there is patently *not* working as it could
and should. Go see "Bulworth" :) If this does not convince you, ask
yourself why many states have been passing regulatory laws for the
HMOs industry, after an initial "free market" approach in the wake of
the failed (add, "because of insurance companies' lobbying and
denigratory ad campaigns") Health Care reform attempted by the
Clinton's Administration in 1993.
There is another point to make. Health care is IMHO a sector of the
economy where free market is bound to perform in a less than socially
optimal way. Some economists may disagree.
First of all, we all know that free market does not always work. If it
did, we'd have Symbolics as the dominant HW/SW company on the planet :)
But, in the case of Health Care, there is a very simple observation
that can be made. I dare any economist to argue convincingly that
when it comes to health, demand may be less than the offer. I.e. when
you are sick (really sick) you want to get better. Period. Which
implies that you want to use the best care avalable to you. Where the
definition of "available" is usually not monetary. In other words,
demand for health care is always higher than offer. Since this
violates the required convergence to an equilibrium between demand and
offer, it'd seem that "free market" is in this case at a loss. Hence
you need goverment intervention to correct the disparities that get
introduced by such policies.
I know what I just wrote is controversial. But I still have to see
convincing arguments for the opposite.
Al right, enough for ranting.
Cheers
--
Marco Antoniotti ===========================================
PARADES, Via San Pantaleo 66, I-00186 Rome, ITALY tel. +39 - 06 68 10 03 17,
fax. +39 - 06 68 80 79 26 http://www.parades.rm.cnr.it/~marcoxa
Marco Antoniotti wrote:
> Of course you could move just south of Florence and North of Rome and
> be within staggering distance from Chianti producing areas.
>
> If you like "denser" wines you could move in North Western Italy :)
That sounds like a very nice idea. Do you welcome unwashed semi-literates with
bad programming habits? ;)
> > Benjamin Kowarsch wrote:
> > > ...Economists have identified poor health care as a waste of
> > > resources and detrimental to the weel being of an economy. There
> > > is a variety of free market models how to better address this than
> > > European Big Brother Government style does.
>
> There is one free market model for Health Care that patently *does not* work.
>
> You guessed it. It is the US one.
[ elided an excellent critique of the American health care system ]
> I know what I just wrote is controversial. But I still have to see convincing
> arguments for the opposite.
I have never lived in the states so felt that I could not pass comment on the
American health care system. However, I know the NHS in this country quite well,
having just spent much of the weekend sitting in a ward in a hospital awaiting
the outcome of a set of results for my very poorly wife. She's ok now, but
knowing that this is why I pay taxes and that at the end of it I would not need
to contact an accountant or hand over my credit-card saved me some amount of
grief.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. Top rant!
Cheers,
:-) will
> Of course you could move just south of Florence and North of Rome and
> be within staggering distance from Chianti producing areas.
I'd move to Alghero in Sardegna where they produce the outstanding Cannonau.
You got to open the bottle a day before you drink it, though.
However, wine is for dining or a quiet evening. Beer is for pubbing.
> There is one free market model for Health Care that patently *does
> not* work.
>
> You guessed it. It is the US one.
It's funny that everyone always assumes a market where there is in fact
very little of it
> Accusing EU goverment styles of "Big Brotherness" is utterly (no:
> umbelievably) ridicoulous.
Oh is it ? Economists tell a different story. The economic indicators tell
a different story ...
Well, maybe you want to wait until the system collapses ...
> Especially if writing from the US
:-) I am not writing from the US. I am writing form a quite different
bastion of capitalism, the ultimate customer and consumer paradise, the
place where people live longer than anywhere else on this planet, the
place where even though the notion of big government has had an impact
people have no entitlement mentatlity, the place where people are very
thrifty and save money rather than overspend, the place where people don't
lament and ask for the government if things went wrong, but spit in their
hands and keep going through hard work, a place with only half the
population of the US and a fraction of its size on a group of islands, of
which only 3% are inhabitable and which is regularly shattered by natural
catastrophees, a place that has almost no natural resources whatsoever,
yet its people have made it to the number two position in the world charts
of economic performance through hard work and a less wasteful approach to
using resources than any other industrialised country, a place the US is
often getting paranoid about, you have guessed it by now I am talking of
Japan.
Many areas of the economy here have more market forces than what you have
probably experienced, and those areas work best. Only where government
couldn't resist to mess with market forces the market did not work. And
when they get rid of the market here, they even do a tremendous job at
that. The banking industry was entirely based on a non-market system and
its collapse has caused disruption all over the globe. A collapse that was
down to market-forces being disabled and which by the way was predicted in
every detail by The Economist Publishing Co. "Japan, the coming collapse"
in the early nineties.
Healthcare is second to none, life expectancy is higher than elsewhere.
Almost any clinics or hospitals are private and health insurance is not a
luxury, taxes are reasonable. A mixture of traditional Chinese medicine
and modern Western medicine contributes to cost effectiveness.
> I still have to see convincing arguments for the opposite.
Come to Japan and have a look how the market can work in areas where it is
allowed to work and also to see the contrast how dramatically things go
bad if the market is exterminated.
You will also find it entertaining to meet strange Foreigners (Gaijins),
especially Westerners like myself, who have been here for quite a while
and as a result have developed very odd views about work ethics, the
economy, western thinking etc etc.
Benjamin
--
As an anti-spam measure I have scrambled my email address here.
Remove "nospam-" and ROT13 to obtain my email address in clear text.
Marco Antoniotti wrote: [1999-08-10 09:15 +0200]
> OFF OFF OFF TOPIC! Stay away from here.
[...]
> I also remember reading that in 1931
> people were amazed at the unbelievable economic performance of the
> Stalinist Soviet Union.
[...]
They must have been amazed at what they _incorrectly perceived to be_
unbelievable economic performance. Stalinist propaganda was very
good, and managed to mislead quite a lot of people. Just as one example,
millions of people died of hunger in Stalinist times; that doesn't quite
qualify as good economic performance, does it.
Vassil Nikolov
Permanent forwarding e-mail: ········@poboxes.com
For more: http://www.poboxes.com/vnikolov
Abaci lignei --- programmatici ferrei.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
OFF OFF OFF OFF OFF TOPIC.
Vassil Nikolov <········@poboxes.com> writes:
> Marco Antoniotti wrote: [1999-08-10 09:15 +0200]
>
> > OFF OFF OFF TOPIC! Stay away from here.
> [...]
> > I also remember reading that in 1931
> > people were amazed at the unbelievable economic performance of the
> > Stalinist Soviet Union.
> [...]
>
> They must have been amazed at what they _incorrectly perceived to be_
> unbelievable economic performance. Stalinist propaganda was very
> good, and managed to mislead quite a lot of people. Just as one example,
> millions of people died of hunger in Stalinist times; that doesn't quite
> qualify as good economic performance, does it.
Of course it does not. But at the time, (i.e. post 1929) the
perception was different. "Grapes of Wrath" was not written in the
USSR. (Of course, *nothing* like that could have been written in the
USSR without incurring into censorship).
Anyway, let's really stop. This is CLL.
Cheers
--
Marco Antoniotti ===========================================
PARADES, Via San Pantaleo 66, I-00186 Rome, ITALY
tel. +39 - 06 68 10 03 17, fax. +39 - 06 68 80 79 26
http://www.parades.rm.cnr.it/~marcoxa
OFF OFF OFF TOPIC! Stay away from here.
···············@xntv.pbz (Benjamin Kowarsch) writes:
> > Of course you could move just south of Florence and North of Rome and
> > be within staggering distance from Chianti producing areas.
>
> I'd move to Alghero in Sardegna where they produce the outstanding Cannonau.
> You got to open the bottle a day before you drink it, though.
>
> However, wine is for dining or a quiet evening. Beer is for pubbing.
>
>
> > There is one free market model for Health Care that patently *does
> > not* work.
> >
> > You guessed it. It is the US one.
>
> It's funny that everyone always assumes a market where there is in fact
> very little of it
You must be kidding. But I'll take that. As a matter of fact I state
that as far as Health Care is concerned, there really is no market.
> > Accusing EU goverment styles of "Big Brotherness" is utterly (no:
> > umbelievably) ridicoulous.
>
> Oh is it ? Economists tell a different story. The economic indicators tell
> a different story ...
Yep. Just yesterday the most important Investment Bank of Italy
(Mediobanca, private) has released a report by which in 1998 the
italian enterprises had a 55% profits increase. Not bad for a
collapsing system.
> Well, maybe you want to wait until the system collapses ...
I does not seem so.
> > Especially if writing from the US
>
> :-) I am not writing from the US.
Touche`! :)
> I am writing form a quite different
> bastion of capitalism, the ultimate customer and consumer paradise, the
> place where people live longer than anywhere else on this planet, the
> place where even though the notion of big government has had an impact
> people have no entitlement mentatlity,
Maybe because Japanese enterprises pretty much guarantee life-long
employement?
> the place where people are very
> thrifty and save money rather than overspend,
The latest estimate I heard about consumer debt in the US (i.e. debts
of consumers mostly toward Credit Cards companies - and excluding home
mortgages) is almost up to 2 trillions USD. So much for the internal
debts of Italy. But then again, economists do not seem to care about
distributed debt. But I am veering off. What I wanted to say is that
at least Italy is up to par with Japan when it comes to personal
savings. Italians save *a lot*, as much as Japaneses (maybe more). Not
bad for a collapsing system.
> the place where people don't
> lament and ask for the government if things went wrong, but spit in their
> hands and keep going through hard work, a place with only half the
> population of the US and a fraction of its size on a group of islands, of
> which only 3% are inhabitable and which is regularly shattered by natural
> catastrophees, a place that has almost no natural resources whatsoever,
> yet its people have made it to the number two position in the world charts
> of economic performance through hard work and a less wasteful approach to
> using resources than any other industrialised country, a place the US is
> often getting paranoid about, you have guessed it by now I am talking of
> Japan.
I know. I know. My Japanese collegue tells me wonderful things about
that country.
> Many areas of the economy here have more market forces than what you have
> probably experienced, and those areas work best. Only where government
> couldn't resist to mess with market forces the market did not work. And
> when they get rid of the market here, they even do a tremendous job at
> that. The banking industry was entirely based on a non-market system and
> its collapse has caused disruption all over the globe. A collapse that was
> down to market-forces being disabled and which by the way was predicted in
> every detail by The Economist Publishing Co. "Japan, the coming collapse"
> in the early nineties.
I was in the US in 1990. The system in Japan seemed to work very well
then. Even the banking system. I also remember reading that in 1931
people were amazed at the unbelievable economic performance of the
Stalinist Soviet Union. As per the possible predictions about the
difficulties of Japan (what was the latest figure for Japan growth
this year? About 7%?), there is an even earlier one by John Kenneth
Galbraith, an economist who should be regarded with a little more
respect than that usually accorded to "The Economist". I bet tehy
used different arguments.
> Healthcare is second to none, life expectancy is higher than elsewhere.
> Almost any clinics or hospitals are private and health insurance is not a
> luxury, taxes are reasonable. A mixture of traditional Chinese medicine
> and modern Western medicine contributes to cost effectiveness.
Once again, even in the US health care works as long as you are
employed, especially by mid-size to big companies.
> > I still have to see convincing arguments for the opposite.
>
> Come to Japan and have a look how the market can work in areas where it is
> allowed to work and also to see the contrast how dramatically things go
> bad if the market is exterminated.
Do you think I am against the "market"? I am not. Coming back to Italy
in 1998 from the US I had to struggle with the telephone company
(Telecom). This lasted 4 months. Then the market opened and service
improved dramatically.
I am just really wary of the "mystique" of the market as it is drilled
into our head by journalists and PR people over the globe.
> You will also find it entertaining to meet strange Foreigners (Gaijins),
> especially Westerners like myself, who have been here for quite a while
> and as a result have developed very odd views about work ethics, the
> economy, western thinking etc etc.
I bet you did. "Travel is fatal to prejudice". I wish I could travel
there and see how things are.
Enough of this thread. This is CLL.
Cheers
--
Marco Antoniotti ===========================================
PARADES, Via San Pantaleo 66, I-00186 Rome, ITALY
tel. +39 - 06 68 10 03 17, fax. +39 - 06 68 80 79 26
http://www.parades.rm.cnr.it/~marcoxa
On 10 Aug 1999 09:15:50 +0200, Marco Antoniotti
<·······@copernico.parades.rm.cnr.it> posted:
>Maybe because Japanese enterprises pretty much guarantee life-long
>employement?
Perhaps true at Sony, but I gather that many Japanese work for
companies smaller than "Gigantic International Conglomerates," and
that they can't make such guarantees...
>> the place where people are very
>> thrifty and save money rather than overspend,
>
>The latest estimate I heard about consumer debt in the US (i.e. debts
>of consumers mostly toward Credit Cards companies - and excluding home
>mortgages) is almost up to 2 trillions USD. So much for the internal
>debts of Italy. But then again, economists do not seem to care about
>distributed debt. But I am veering off. What I wanted to say is that
>at least Italy is up to par with Japan when it comes to personal
>savings. Italians save *a lot*, as much as Japaneses (maybe more). Not
>bad for a collapsing system.
I gather that I probably save 50 times what the "average American"
does, and I'm not thrilled with my savings rate...
--
Who needs fault-tolerant computers when there's obviously an ample
market of fault-tolerant users?
········@ntlug.org- <http://www.hex.net/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>