I have always thought that Socialism got a bad press in the United States because it got confused with Communism and the images of Stalin and the Soviet Union it conjured up. So ingrained during the cold war was the notion that Communism was a bad thing that Americans now balk at the idea of anything that smells of Communism, therefore Socialism is a swearword.
Not to say that there are not some similarities between the two but i had my bubble burst by a visiting Texan today who dismissed my claim and stated that the reason Americans are so against Socialism is because they are too selfish.
He explained that the reason that Obama will never be able to introduce NHS style Health care in America is because of the 'Why should i pay for it?' attitude of his fellow Americans, a position that he agreed with.
Americans, he stated, will not agree to pay for anything that other people and not they will benefit from, if you can't afford it then tough, you go without.
No concern from him for my argument that medical care should be a basic human right available to all and not just those that can afford it, he just fell back to the 'Why should i pay for their treatment?' argument.
Equally short thrift was given to my ponderings that the USA is the only industrialised nation that does not provide universal health care for its citizens and almost 60 million of his fellow Americans had no health insurance. 'Not my problem so why should i have to pay for them?'
I don't know if this friend of a friend was purposely being a jerk to try and provoke me or is just a jerk anyway but if what he said is true, and Americans are too selfish to care enough about there countrymen to put in a few cents of their wages each month to help those less fortunate, then good luck to anyone old, unemployed, poor or underprivileged because it seems that you will be hard pressed to find many there who care.
2 comments:
Health care in America? The Government of America (bought by the corporations and Israel) needs all its funds to advance its obsessive warmongering and takeover of the world.
In America, if you're not rich, and few are, you have no value (except for street sweeping).
God Bless Rich Americans!
"The Government of America (bought by the corporations and Israel) needs all its funds to advance its obsessive warmongering and takeover of the world."
Abject balderdash and empty-headed sloganeering, as usual. At last count (in 2009), US federal spending on defence was 23% of the entire budget. Pretty high by the standards of most countries admittedly, but how is that 'all' of its funds?
The US government already spends 19% of that same budget on Medicare and Medicaid.
Personally I think a free-at-point-of-service national health service is a nice thing to have, and I've had only good experiences of it over here, but in other countries it's for the citizens of those other countries (or their representatives) to ultimately decide whether they want one or not.
And, to state the obvious, it wouldn't be very nice (let alone logical) if I were to imply that everyone who disagrees with me on this issue wants to 'take over the world'!
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