curious question.
Who here gets free health care?

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Me and my family.

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I know the u.s. isn't free.
But what about all you other guys.?

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communist countries

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i think germany has it... but i could be wrong.

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ah the concept of communism.
such harmony
too bad power corrupts (just ask mr. president)

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communism is so absurd and farfetched it makes my blood boil

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The ideals are great.
every one is equal.
but it will never work
but who give you the right to push capitalism upon the rest of the world?

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It would be great if Communism could work..

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it would. That's what the hippies thought.
But they were dreamers. (unlike john lennon, he called himself a dreamer, but his visions could be reality, he was a realist)

the ones against communism usually are the people doing less work and gettin paid more
every day i see this.
I'm a tradesman. and usually every day or so, i see my fellow tradesman, bustin our asses of to make some cash, and we're doing a house for a man/women who doesn't do anything! that helps our species survive!

Yesterday i drywalled the house of polician. Big fuckin house. The guy in no way helps our society. He's tied up in land development. (he chooses if you're mailbox can be green or white). And all the motherfuckers workin on his house, are not only more work oriented, but smarter than this prick.
But it's not about what you know......
it's about who'w your daddy or who's dick you suck.

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so true, but you also have to know about building up and progression. As you get older/more experienced, you get paid more for an equal amount of work and can move up to more quality living. Im glad my parents taught me this at 16 so im not another dissillusioned adolecsent.

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Britain has free health care courtesy of the National Health Service. It is paid for in part by National Insurance Contributions (NICs) which are deducted from any wages that we earn that are above the personal allowance (~£4'600) at a rate of 11%.

Sure, taxation is effectively higher, but we don't have to worry about finding the money to pay for treatment if we have an accident. I would imagine this to be quite stressful when combined with the after effects of being in, for example, a serious accident.

We still have to pay for dental treatment and any prescriptions we may incur, though.

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same here john.

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one drawback about free healthcare though is that there is no progression of medical technology, and they have to pay countries like the us to get new techniques and technologies.

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That's not true. Much of the world's medical research is conducted by the big pharmaceutical companies who are independent from governments. Additional research is also carried out by universities who receive government funded grants as well as sponsorship from pharmaceutical companies.

If anything, private healthcare ensures that a large proportion of profits go to the directors and shareholders of the healthcare provider and not back into research. With free healthcare, it is the non-profit government that decides the funding allocated to research.

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oh, damn, well the government wont always be allocation funds to research?

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Well, yes they could just withold funding and re-allocate it to - let's say an illegal war in Iraq - but most governments would not like to be seen as if they don't care about the welfare of it's citizens. After all, if the government doesn't care for the health of it's nation, they are not going to win many elections. Elections are fought and won in four key areas: Education, crime, health and employment. Recent events have brought foreign policy into the reckoning in America, but in Britain those four areas are paramount.

Generally, medical research is very important as, in the long run, better, quicker and more efficient medical treatment is advantageous to both free healthcare and private healthcare states. In the case of the free healthcare state, it means the government is spending less money on treating the sick and less man-hours are lost in the workplace, ie, productivity is increased which in turn aids economic growth. In the private healthcare state it means that the sick spend less on being treated and therefore have more funds to spend on goods that can boost the economy.

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They would never do that John!

Communism is a theory conceived to solve the problems of greed without actually addressing greed itself. Marx's ideas about the dialectic of history allowed him to come up with his theory without making sure it conformed to reality; in fact, he justified it by it unreality. It's unsurprising that it's unpracticeable. And, though I agree with Trendkill in saying that it's a good idea in concept and for those same reasons, when you read the actual founding documents it's fairly obvious that those aren't Marx's concerns, or the concerns of any of the experiments in communism we've seen over the years.

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i hope your not saying the war in iraq was illegal. The war is over by the way, i think they called it the occupation or something. Whatever, we shouldnt be over there, although i think afgahnistan was justified.

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actually the war is illegal

"Yes, if you wish. I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN charter from our point of view, from the charter point of view, it was illegal."
-kofi annan

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I don't see any reasons it should be considered legal. Nor am I sure what a 'legal' war would be, but I assume it's one with a clearer reason of less, or preferably no, moral ambiguity.


I don't care what they call it. We have a thousand fantastic euphemisms for war. It's certainly over in the sense that there's no Iraqi state to be at war against, but technicalities like that exist to justify the euphemisms.

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for sure dude, i wasnt condoning it, we dont belong in iraq, but i think we need to at least futily attempt to stave off terrorism for a while.

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There are times when doing the right thing necessitates breaking the law. As Frank Miller put it: Sometimes helping your friends means killing a lot of people. This is just not necessarily one of those times, though there's a lot of debate about that.

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yeah, unfortunately theres a difference between the law and what is actually right.

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There will always be difference between whats right, and what is law. But marginly, you can't trust al people to judge what is right and wrong. Therefore we have laws. Following laws may not alway be the right thing, but they are most of the time.
Unfortunatly, a lot of laws are only to accomodate for the rich and powerfull.

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yeah, being part of the middle class, i am the one who always gets shit on.

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Pfff Van Gogh.... a stupid racist piece of shit who gets shot by another stupid racist piece of shit, what a waste of time!

I'm disgusted by the stupidity of a lot of the comments here.

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care to elaborate?

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yeah, what the hell?

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why would you call him a racist? because he spoke his mind?

I would consider him as a right wing fellow, yes. But racist? no. Have you seen his movies or speeches? I doubt it. the guy went to marocco to study there, he knows what he was talking about, only he had an extreme way of saying it.

On another note, today there was a threath to our government by a muslim-extremist cell in holland, they treathened to blow up government buildings and shit. today, a MP squad took down a full block of houses and found chemicals and C4 explosives. two cops where wounded when someone threw a grenade at them while they where taking other residents out of the block. motherfuckers... the woman they where taking out was wounded too and is in the hospital.

shit is really hitting the fan, I heard the Queen herself will be forming an emergency council or something.

Yeah, they had a pretty good sized article in the newspaper over here too. Pretty lame, goddamn religion. ALL RELIGION

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article about what??? it happend today... it was on cnn though.

about theos murder.

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I'm disgusted by the stupidity of your comment. Rascist my ass.

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ah allright, didn't expect it to go international or something. just like that crap yesterday, the special forces (BBE) had the lockdown on those fuckers though, they used a fucking bazooka to take down the door.

I don't think the special forces had a job to do in holland for the last ten years, they're allways in iraq and the balkan and shit.

the balkans have been a powder keg since world war one dude.

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somebody's paying attention in global history class

the balkans arent a huge problem now, i dont think.

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it is, our special forces are taking out terrorists there on a daily basis, weird really. they should be at home drinking beer and smoking pot

yeah they should. Its good to have special forces, but seriously, why does all these terrorists have to be doing this? On veterans day at that.

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There's never been a racist isolationist country before. Only scores and scores of racist imperialistic countries.

There are too many people of mixed ethnicities. Nobody is really pure anything. The idea just doesn't make logical sense.

We wouldn't have these problems if there were no religion. If there's no religion, people can abuse and misuse religion for the purpose of mayhem or oppression. It would be nice if we could get rid of religion.

Of course, we never will. We will never get rid of religion, we will never get rid of hate. We belong to a race of animal that is bloodthirsty and destructive. There will never be peace. Don't worry too much, though. At the rate people are destroying the planet via pollution, the human race won't have much longer to perpetuate it's own torturous existence.

Here's an interesting fact- Homo sapiens is the only animal that experiences bloodlust. That's very telling.

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this week two fuckers where taken down by the special forces. after they threw handgrenade's at cops in the city.. jezus. thats just sick. the cops where doing an investigation and rang the bell. the door was booby trapped and they got grenades thrown at them, two cops in the hospital, then they called in snipers and shit and took em downtown. sick shit!

so true, but even if we exterminate religion, hate will be spread some other way, like skin color, or what music people listen to, or what clothes theyre wearing, or their sexuality. Hate will never stop, and when robot spiders from Zorklon 5 destroy the entire human race and take over, hate might end... except for the robot spiders.

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you're a fucking poor excuse for an excuse for a clown.

you can't exterminate religion, it's a belief not something you can take away, Hitler tried and failed.

it shouldn't even be attemtped either thats just racism, but the point is, it's no religion causing the problem, it's a bunch of poor fucks that use religion as an excuse to wreak havoc around the globe.

hitler tried to remove the jews from "his" land. he was a pan germanic uniter, not a jew destroyer. but you couldnt stop religion. EVER. too many people would practice it alone in their own homes. its just not happening. exterminating a race could be done, but religion isnt heriditary

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good point transient... genocide is a little too far though to get rid of religion. By my estimation though, it would seem like most athiests would be white.

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the poorer, more down trodden cling to religion to justify their suffering.

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hello... 'his' land?

not only did he tried to remove the jews from germany, from all of europe, he was in fact a jew destroyer, he killed about 70% of all dutch jews. a pan germanic uniter my ass, he killed jews from north-africa to russia. His goal for his master race and country included elimitating all jews, gays, gypsees, etc.

exterminating a race, man that would be allmost just as difficult...

Once again.. Stalin prooves himself as a genious and make himself the peoples god.

Every household during his rule had a picture of him.

The only way to beat religion is to create a new one..

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interesting theory.

Untrue. Were it true, he would have been satisfied with the many, many concessions he was given before the invasion of Poland, and would never have invaded the rest of Bohemia after being given the Sudetenland. He performed his actions under the aegis of pan-German uniter, which was a popular position after the Treaty of Versailles and an acceptable one due to the racial distribution of countries along the lines of Wilson's 14 points, but that doesn't accurately describe him. It's also not any better. That the Germans believed that a country in the center of Europe could have retained any racial identity whatsoever is laughable.


Stalin didn't invent the Cult of Personality, though he arguably perfected it. I would say Mao outdid him there, though. Hitler commissioned dozens of paintings of himself in the manner of a Wagnerian (read: pagan, heroic, definitively German) God. Almost any ancient empire (including Japan up until the end of World War II) or kingdom you'd like to name considered the head a kind of God. The concept of a Divine Monarch connects the ruler and his actions to religion. There are thousands of other examples. Stalin came up with nothing. He just killed everybody who seemed like they were worshipping anything else, whatsoever. Or, if he could, he killed what they were worshipping.

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Def, you overanalyzed my post, Zorklon 5, robot spiders.

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hey hey, i put " " around his for a reason. im stating what he thought. not what i support

im not sure what the thinking on north africa was, though

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yes, but i think we can all agree that hitler was just a madman with good speaking skills. I read mein Kampf, and it was pretty insane.

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most of that book was ghost written by karl haushoffer. whether or not hitler was a good writer, he captured the broken spirits of the germans. he was a political MASTERMIND, and there has never been one like him since

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id think more along the lines of political madman.

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I'd argue that he wasn't, and there have definitely been equally effective demagogues since, including ones who could attain a position through positive action and qualities. He was the right man for his situation, but without that particuar set of circumstances he was, as he proved, just some nut yelling for revolution in a beer hall. He was certainly ruthlessly manipulative, but that's not being a mastermind. Something like the Reichstag fire, without which he'd never have been in such a position of power, is not an act of political genius. When he tried to act within a political sphere he was a spectacular failure. Regardless, demagoguery has less to do with the person than the moment. As a person I find we often give him spectacular qualities (as a politician or a speaker, neither of which he was particularly good at) because it's easier to believe he had some special powers than to see him as the scarily banal person he was.

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