"Americans not getting bang for buck in Europe"

milesh wrote:
Miguel Cruz wrote:
Boredom, provinciality, xenophobia, desolation, lack of variety in food and
music and architecture and viewpoints.

No thanks.

You get bored because of the items that hold your interest are only
found in big cities. I love the theater, museums and cultures found in
many big cities. The noise and pollution and lack of scenery I can do
without. I go to the city to shop, see a show etc. when I want then
leave back to a more peaceful area to live. However, I find that there
is more to do outdoors that holds my interest than in a big city. Just
walking around the streets of a city is boring to me, especially with
the constant noise of horns and the foul language between drivers stuck
in NYC traffic. Just as scenic views get boring to you, architecture
and viewpoints get boring to me after a while.

Actually I love scenic natural views, but I don't always enjoy the
above-mentioned side effects that often come along with them. So I get out
of the city, see the rocks and canyons and moutainscapes, then high-tail it
back in.

As for the foul-mouthed drivers of NYC, they're hilarious! I love all the
verbal play. I could walk around any big city day in and day out for
months.

But, different strokes for different folks. Neither country nor city is
inherently better. I guess it comes down to what you're used to or so.
Though I know a lot of people who've moved from country to city or vice
versa late enough in life to know what they're doing, and it doesn't seem to
correlate very well with what sort of environment they grew up in. I wonder
what makes a city-lover?

miguel
--
Hundreds of travel photos from around the world: http://travel.u.nu/

(PJ O'Donovan) quoted:


Few are ready to recognize that the rise of fascism and naziism was
not a reaction against the socialist trends of the preceding period
but a necessary outcome of those tendencies. This is a truth which
most people were unwilling to see even when the similarities of many
of the repellent features of the internal regimes in communist Russia
and National Socialist Germany were widely recognized. As a result,
many who think themselves infinitely superior to the aberrations of
naziism, and sincerely hate all its manifestations, work at the same
time for ideals whose realization would lead straight to the abhorred
tyranny.

A man beats his wife, and says that it is because he loves her. Does
that mean that all who love are bad?

--
PB
The return address has been MUNGED

"EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque)" wrote in message ...
Gregory Morrow wrote:

Economically, I think the average, working American may have had things
best, back in the 1950's

More didn't have employer paid health insurance then but then they
didn't whine about it.

Most Health Insurance paid by employers was introduced by employers
during the Nixon years to circumvent Nixon's wage freeze in Nixon's
attempt to reverse the raging inflation of the Carter years.

"Ellie C" wrote in
message
...


Miles wrote:


EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque) wrote:

I'm with you on that one, Gregory! I don't
at all mind paying taxes if
I can see that I'm getting something in
return. But there are other
needs besides police and fire services - the
quality of public education
varies from state to state, "decent" housing
likewise, and our "health
care" is a joke, compared to the rest of the
world. (Yes, the "quality"
may in some ways be better than in some other
countries, but the
"availability" of it to the average person is
debatable - especially
when many Americans of middle income cannot
afford to buy health
insurance, and fewer and fewer employers
provide it anymore.)


Is lousy healthcare for all better than good
healthcare for the
majority? Look at the tax rates for countries
with socialized
healthcare. Then look at how some of those
programs are in financial
trouble. No system is without flaws but I
have yet to see a socialized
healthcare system that provides quality
healthcare or is financially
stable.


From my personal experience, the health care I
have access to in France
is much more available and just as good if not
better than the health
care I had access to in the US. And as for
financial stability, the HMO
I belonged to back in the US was constantly on
the rocks, being bought
out by one insurance company after another - and
it cost us over $1000 a
month in premiums!

INterestingly enough, I'm paying less here for
health care than I did in
the US, even though I don't yet have insurance
here. A doctor's visit
here costs the same as my insurance co-payment
in the US, and is
available. At the HMO I was in, it would be days
before I could see a
doctor; I was always shunted off to a nurse
practitioner. I once spent
two years being treated for a nonexistent
condition, while the actual
one went untreated, until I finally got to see a
doctor. Drugs are also
cheaper than they were in the US, even though
the insurance company was
supposedly paying for most of the cost.

My experience in the Netherlands was similar to
yours in France. My wife was diagnosed with
primary liver cancer, had three surgeries and
many, many tests (MRI, scoped multiple times both
ends, CT scans, labs, etc.) Her condition proved
to be terminal, and we were able to get home
health care (RN every day, multiple physician
visits to the home, sickroom furniture). In the
weeks after her death, the physician made two
visits to the house to make sure I was doing OK!
I cannot imagine my wife getting better care
anywhere, including the States. Total cost for
four months of intensive diagnosis and treatment,
plus terminal care, was just under $25,000. That's
the *total* bill, not my co-pay. I'd imagine the
cost in the States would have been at least 10
times that amount. That estimate is based on my
years as an intensive care RN, watching patients
and families get sucked in and ground up by the
machinery of the American medical system.

You are wrong about getting "shunted off" to a
nurse practioner, BTW. Studies have shown that
NPs do a more thorough job of examination than do
doctors, spend more time with teach patient than
do doctors, are better at answering patient
questions, and have a diagnostic accuracy rate
equal to that of MDs. They're a last, best hope
for keeping the US medical system afloat a while
longer.

Tom Bellhouse, RN
Alto, GA, USA

Earl Evleth wrote:

What is
needed is an income transfer policy which transfers money from those already
getting too much to those not getting enough.

Who are you to tell me or anyone else that they earn too much? Who
decides what is too much? Why I can't I decide how much I want to make
and take the steps through life to do it without fear of you punishing
me and taking it?

Miguel Cruz wrote:

Seems pretty straightforward. If most wealthy people are honest hard-working
individuals, then there are two possibilities:

A) They are wealthy BECAUSE they are honest, hard-working individuals, or
B) They are wealthy for some other reason.

If A, then you are saying that poor people are not honest, hard-working
individuals.

Your logic in that deduction is completely flawed but there are better
NG's to discuss it in.


If B, then you are saying that wealth is not the reward of honest hard work
and therefore shouldn't be considered to have whatever moral value that
would otherwise imply.

You are under the dilusion that wealthy people can't be honest and hard
working. Wanting what others that have more has a way of warping your
senses in that direction. Most wealthy individuals are very honest and
hard working individuals that figured out how to achieve what they wanted.

Miguel Cruz wrote:

I think you are presenting false alternatives, but yes, I think it's better
to have 100% of the people eating sandwiches than to have 60% eating chicken
cordon bleu and 40% starving in the streets.

Then move to Cuba.

Miles wrote:



Miguel Cruz wrote:

I think you are presenting false alternatives, but yes, I think it's better
to have 100% of the people eating sandwiches than to have 60% eating chicken
cordon bleu and 40% starving in the streets.

Then move to Cuba.

America: love it or leave it.

--
PB
The return address has been MUNGED

Padraig Breathnach wrote:

America: love it or leave it.

That is true. It's also true with regards to any other country. Most
people love the country they have the most experience in. Most seem to
have trouble understanding countries that differ greatly from their own
as if their own does things the 'right' way. I try to be more open
minded and learn more about the different cultures of the world. Thats
why I love to travel. I've yet to visit a country where the people
didn't treat me with kindness including those that according to the
media hate us Americans.

(Miguel Cruz) wrote in message ...
milesh wrote:
Gregory Morrow wrote:
The great divide between the US very rich and the rest of society now makes
the storied "Gilded Age" of the late 19th century (when there was no Federal
income tax) absolutely *pale* in comparison. There is a whole new glass of
mega - rich that run US society and government, they just are not quite as
outrageously ostentatious as the Robber Barons of old....

So the solution to the problem is what? Try to raise up the bottom? Or
is it to bring down the top?

Raising the bottom is going to require at least some cooperation from those
at the top who control all the resources.

miguel

Would a scenario where 1% of top income earners pay more than more
than the 90%
that comprise the bottom be a fair "cooperation"?

If not what would you quantify as a fair "cooperation" at the top?

In the US the top 10% pay 65% of FIT and the bottom 90% pay 35% of FIT
while the
top 1% pays 35%. In addition a large segment pays no FIT at all so 1%
of FIT payers are bearing the FIT tax burden in direct amounts equal
to something more than 90% of the population.

What should the formula be for the "cooperation" of the "rich" in
"paying their fair share"?