Dan Patterson is the host of the excellent Creepy Sleepy podcast and is a UN Correspondent. Dan and I talk about the pros and cons of social welfare in capitalist countries like the USA and Australia as well as some of the problems with the UN model.
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It was a pleasure coming on the show, Cam – hopefully TPN and Creepy Sleepy can keep working together!
You guys touched on good topics.
Really funny, when somebody’s poor and lazy he should get 50% of what the hard-working and independent people earned. Once he’s earned more he finally realizes that it depends on him and not the government to give him, he doesn’t want to pay the taxes. It’s good to take someone’s money for the sake of the society as long as you’re too lazy to earn it yourself. I personally despise socialism and teaching people that someone owes them something. You’ve got low corporate taxes and VAT (not 27% like in Sweden) or some other non-sense like France. France is bankrupt, it’s pulled by the EU and other forces. I will never give 50% of my money to the government and then wait for the Royal Mail to go on strike because they want more for the same amount of work! Everything should be private and your doctor will take a better care of you if he knows he has to fight to have patients and not a government grant.
Most of the rich are thieves in the eyes of the poor. Go and learn what interest you have on your credit card. Wealthy people are wealthy because they know you have to earn first before you pay for it. And poor people get in debt before they start earning. If they have $2000 on the account they cannot wait to waste it… I have many friends that value showing off in a car that proper investment. That’s exactly poor people mentality.
I would so replace you in the USA for my socialistic country in Europe which I escaped from to the UK (which is fairly good to run business).
Cheers Cam for the sensible approach to giving up 50% of income.
Raf, have you seen Sicko? The privatized health care system in the US has major flaws. While I have issues with socialized welfare, I also don’t think it is healthy for any society to have people unable to get a decent level of health care or education because they can’t afford it. Mostly I worry about the kids. If your parents were unambitious or make stupid decisions and consequently can’t afford private health care, should we allow that to determine the healthcare their children receive? Or the education they receive? It can become a negative spiral. I know. I grew up below the poverty line with a father who didn’t have much of a work ethic (my mother had and has a great work ethic though). I had to learn the hard way how to make a buck, but I know how easy it could have been to play out the patterns I learned from my father. And as I said in the show, I think the main reason we should help the people less fortunate than us is that it makes for a better world. A society built on selfishness and greed isn’t sustainable.
Yes, I have seen it and I still believe that everything should be private.
Cam, I respect you for many reasons, but you are not the only person that had the problem of alcoholism in your family. My mother did everything she could to give me the best education possible in a communist country far poorer that Australia. She did that against the same odds your mother did. I went through public healthcare, which is shit, nobody cares about you and it’s all about who-knows-who. She spent fortune on treating me in private clinics despite paying mandatory tax on so called free healthcare which didn’t want to help. She ran herself to near heart failure and I had so many fights with my father I don’t want to remember. I’m glad now that I’m fortunate enough to live in the UK where I can help her at last. Had my family been born in Australia or the UK she would’ve created a big company. Instead, she was brought to near bankrupcy by my native, catholic country which values solidarity over liberty.
I think children of the least fortunate families will have the same future with or without public healthcare. I would have anyway. The role of the country is not to throw money at them but to lower the taxes to give people the decent job to sustain their families and choose private insurance. If the parents are not fitted to raise a child they should be isolated in the most rare case.
I wasn’t against helping other people! I just want to do it through private ventures and not the government. I want to pay £300 a month to a charity instead of the government which knows better who to pay.
If you want a better society, please advertise private ventures of helping other people not higher taxes. This is the way to give truly free healthcare and not a fake social one.
I still think that your opinions are far greater than anything we can hear in the mass media and I would like to thank you for what you are doing!
All the best!
Raf
Thanks Raf. But let’s be clear – this show isn’t about my opinions – it’s about what we are doing right now – discussing the way we want the world to be!
Let’s not forget that quasi-socialist systems of government, such as Australia, the UK, France and even communist countries such as Cuba, have done terrific things over the last 100 years in raising the standard of healthcare for their citizens, reducing the infant mortality rate, etc.
So I think it’s hard to claim that socialized healthcare is a bad thing for the people.
The question is obviously one of the morality of taxation. Is it right for one group of people to be able to take by force the assets of another group, even if the latter group happens to be considered ‘rich’?
The main question is would it have all been way faster if it had been done privately for the gain of the individual and not for the benefit of the glorious ideals of communism / socialism?
Would we have the level of sophistication of the Honda motors today if Japan told Soichiro Honda to do it for the people, publicly funded and not for his own company?
Would he have bothered so much?
That was my point! I know what socialized healthcare is and know how much money is wasted through incompetence of the people that decide about the money someone else has contributed. I worked in a public hospital and I couldn’t bare it.
Would what have been faster? The improvement in healthcare? How would those improvements have happened if governments hadnt taken revenue from tax dollars to invest into the healthcare system?
Let’s not forget that private companies are as useless and corrupt as public companies. Healthcare has been privatized to a large part in the US but has it lead to better healthcare for their citizens? Perhaps for those that can afford it.
But at what point in human development do we have enough wealth that we can afford to take care of those who don’t or can’t take care of themselves?
I’d much rather see a system though were we volunteered to contribute money to help rather than it taken from us by force.
Let’s be grown-ups here! Mouthing childlike simplistic solutions based on comic-book thinking is beneath people who have the intelligence and wit to participate in the new media as providers or consumers.
Everyone who would like to live in a country without income redistribution and without substantial provision of public services through progressive taxation is welcome to move without delay to Mexico (or any similar country).
The example of the two people (the hard worker and the lazy lay-about) is a ludicrous example which has effectively zero in common with the actual situation it proposes to describe.
Those proposing the superiority of laisser-faire capitalism to modern post-Keynsian economics needs to hand on heart say they think they Irish Potato Famine was a good thing. (There was no shortage of food in Britain, it was a purely economic construct trigger by the Blight.)
Without the framework of a safe and secure society of educated consumers how exactly do you think people (excluding thugs and exploiters) get rich. How much would the ‘hard worker’s’ investment property be worth without Police to keep the streets safe, paved roads, working sewers, etc etc? How would they accumulate wealth without regulated banking and registered property rolls. To suggest that ‘voluntary giving’ would provide these is pure fantasy!! The simple fact that so many people are assuming that anything the government does is incompetent and inefficient tells you that they would not volunteer funds to such a body. It just doesn’t stand up to a few minutes of critical thought. Some fantasy that everything private business does is wonderful is total rubbish. Who would want a defence force designed by the group that gave us Windows Vista? Not saying that the public sector is better just that the assertion that private business are better at anything other than providing obscene salaries for their Executives does not stand up to any analysis. The advantages of competition is, so far, best provided by capitalism but it isn’t the private/public that is important. It’s effective competition. Has Telstra suddenly become a paragon with reduced government interference? Hardly!!
And one the UN. I am very very very tired of this ‘taxi-driver/hair-dresser’ analysis of the events of 2003. The UN is UNESCO, WHO, UNHCR, etc etc. Not just the security council.
If the argument is that whenever people speaking wisdom are ignored by fools and bullies then every person offering informed opinion and/or debate should give up the first time they fail. That means the TPN needs to shut down right now! This is stupid. The fact that powerful people and bodies are as likely to do foolish things (even when advised better) is no reason to keep putting forward the better and slightly or greatly less foolish options. Since Cam constantly says that people should read books instead of watching Reality TV. Millions of people ignore him. Does that mean he has failed and should shutup and close down? Absolutely not! What he is saying is right and he will keep saying it. That’s what the UN is about. Keeping on saying the ‘right’ (always debatable) thing in the face of power in the hope that one day wisdom will beat stupidity in this or that issue. Just like the poor the fools and bogans are always with us. If we let them win then we deserve what will happen to us.
Have fun everyone, read a book on the subject of economics and keep putting forward ideas for debate and listen to what others say and learn and learn and learn.
Cheers
Janotte
Suggesting people who don’t like the way things are run should just move to Mexico is silly. It’s totally valid to discuss things we don’t like about how our country or society works and hope to change them. How do you think we got here in the first place?
And I also fully support taxi drivers, hair dressers, and anybody else discussing the role of the UN and the events of 2003. We are all citizens Janotte. We all vote. We all pay taxes. We all should take an interest in how our countries (and the international bodies that our countries are involved in) behave themselves. Just because someone may not be as well versed as you in a particular subject, does not mean they don’t have the right to discuss and debate the issue. Don’t just jump in a criticize people for having opinions. If you think they are wrong, educate. I’m certainly no expert on any of these subjects but I want to learn more. I want to understand, be involved.
The UN is more than just a body that says the right thing. It has power. How many countries has the UN engineered economic or trade sanctions again in the last 20 years? Why didn’t it impose such sanctions on the US and allies after the 2003 invasion?
Fair enough. My rhetorical flourish was poorly chosen.
I didn’t mean people should actually go to Mexico. I meant they should cast their minds around the world and ask themselves why all the rich and powerful countries have largely similar systems of progressive taxation and income redistribution? Why is it the failing countries that don’t? Could there be a connection? Could there be some elements of cause and effect? Stranger things have happened!
My point about ‘taxi driver’ statements is not about the people but about the behaviour. I did not say they shouldn’t express their opinions. That’s putting words in my mouth.
I know quite a few people in both admirable professions. What these people say when doing their ‘public patter’ and what they’ll discuss with me over a meal or a beer are vastly different. They have a patter of self-contained ‘commonsense’ statements that they throw to customers because they rarely produce anything other than a bit of a nod. They are not interested in debating points deeply when they are in blather mode. They aren’t discussing the issues with an intent to get any closer to the truth. They are just performing an accepted act of blathering banalities. (Sadly this is also true of too much politics in today’s media driven world.) But when the time is right to go looking for deeper meaning then they are people, not performers, and their behaviour is different. I believe you are in search of wisdom and truth and not just blathering. After all, I can get empty, thoughtless blathering on commercial radio a damn sight easier than downloading podcasts. I expect more of you and this community because I know there is time and brainpower available here to search for truth not just fill the silence. We aren’t here to entertain a sullen passenger. We are here for something better!
Didn’t you have a patter when you were in ‘salesman’ mode? Was that the same as what you did and said when you were being ‘you’? If I had said ‘salesman’ in my first point would you have been offended? I use the ‘taxi driver statement’ comment to taxi drivers when they are being people (not performing a role) and they ‘get it’. For anyone who didn’t and though I was disparaging people (as opposed to pat empty statements) I deeply and sincerely apologise.
What ‘power’ does the UN have? “Real power cannot be given, it must be taken.” You believe that, do you not? How could the UN ‘take’ anything? Every single bit of power the UN has is constructed from the consent of members. It is the epitome of intrinsic powerlessness. It is completely dependant upon the goodwill and common belief of the members. If enough people stop believing in it then it will disappear like the idea of Santa Claus in a child’s mind.
I earnestly believe that if you sit down and question yourself hard on what you mean when you say “The UN” and keep challenging yourself and digging deep you will find that what you meant when you originally used “The UN” does not exist. I know you have the wit and internal honesty to challenge yourself like this. The only question is the availability of time and focus.
I could list pages of times when the UN failed to impose a sanction and pages of when a sanction was applied and it failed. 2003 is not a special instance just one of 60 years of almost universal abject failure to do almost anything at all. But in amongst that tale of woe and failure and cowardice and corruption is a steady and ignored smattering of trivial successes that collectively add up to a better world created not “by the UN” but “because the UN exists”.
Wow, here’s another amazing fact: The rich countries all have plasma TVs. The poor countries don’t. Therefore it’s simple! Those countries with plasma TVs will be rich. “Because the rooster crows, the sun will rise.”
“Post hoc, ergo propter hoc” as President Bartlett would say.
The reasons why countries like Mexico have large economic and social problems have a lot more to do with the fact that they were invaded and pillaged by Christian Monarchs than progressive taxation.
It sounds to me like you agree that the UN isn’t an effective international body and needs to be overhauled?