Rjan:
The answer is international co-operation and co-ordination. Eliminate tax rate competition, then the rich can’t shop around for low tax rates. That is the current challenge, to globalise politically, because whilst the economy has already become globalised (and it is the global economy from which the wealthy are extracting their “earnings”) but political control has not, the rich will just shop around and vote with their feet.And even in the meantime, the risk of exodus is overstated - particularly if the rich understand that the political will is there to override extreme market verdicts and to bind them into economic regulations to which they may not individually consent.
That in the end is why the rich are all natural Brexiteers and anti-EU, because political integration threatens them with democratic control. Just like now, the Tories can only abolish human rights or employment rights (on behalf of their wealthy donors) by violating previous European treaties - whereas they’d quite like to give prisoners a kicking to make the law-abiding poor feel better about austerity, and they’d quite like to abolish paid holidays, and they’d quite like to abolish limits on working time, and so forth.
However I can still remember my father being left on a trolley in a corridor while waiting for A and E assessment for hours with numerous broken vertebrae among other serious injuries having been involved in a collapsed roof incident at the factory he was working in at the time.That was during the Wilson government of 1965-70.While even the ward surroundings were more Soviet Union dormitory accomodation than US private room standards.Which is a situation which hasn’t changed much well into the 21st century.
Things certainly haven’t changed here in that respect.
The difference is that in the US in 1965, lots of people weren’t waiting for treatment on trolleys in the corridor, they were waiting on pavements to die. Any comparison that is ever made with the US system (and especially historically), has to bear in mind that lots of people (often the sickest and most impaired) simply do not get inside the hospital in the first place in the US.
The Queen has a private doctor in Buckingham Palace, but you wouldn’t seriously suggest that that is the luxurious standard of UK healthcare, because most people can simply never afford such a facility, and will simply never see the inside of Buckingham Palace with its gaggle of private doctors.
On that note the relevant figure is around £100 billion in a country with a working population of around 38,000,000 which seems like less than £4,000 each on average more like £2,500 ?.But which still puts that US $89 per month figure into perspective and what the US health care system manages to do with it.
Well you do the maths, but it’s clearly still a modest amount (relative to the per-adult GDP of £80k a year) for what amounts to the basic maintenance of the human body.
While obviously answering the questions of the so called ‘bad’ US health care system which is anything but.IE give it realistic funding per capita in the form of decent insurance premiums then make the same comparison.Bearing in mind that even at $89 per month the US is still an attractive destination for disillusioned emigrant NHS doctors on the grounds of better funding.
$89 dollars a month doesn’t even begin to reflect what the real average costs of healthcare are in the US. Which, to be clear, the cost of US healthcare is substantially higher than the UK. If you’re paying that, then it means some pensioner is paying $500 dollars a month (or dying of conditions they can’t afford to treat), or it means some unemployed fellow who can’t afford even $89 a month is suffering with an untreated condition.
Firstly proportional tax disparity is more a reflection of wage disparity between the higher earners v lower.IE concentrating too much on the taxation angle is a red herring in attacking the problem from the wrong end.When the priority should be to get general income levels up so that everyone is able to contribute more across the board among the ( at present ) excessively low wage groups.It’s only ‘after’ that has been done that you can then fine tune the taxation system.Which would obviously be a lot easier to do from a point of less wage/incomes disparity.
As for thinking that you can fix all the problems by the same old hit the rich mantra let alone more centralised globalised Socialist inspired government
I think that’s what we rightly fought the cold war to stop happening.While yes the idea of selective globalisation to create profits for a few at the expense of the national interest is just as bad as Socialism.On that note we’ve obviously more or less agreed on the problem but we’re equally obviously looking at solving it from totally opposite ends.IE yourself seemingly the Socialist point of view and myself Nationalist.Which hopefully people will be bright enough to realise is what’s at stake and the lines that ( should ) divide the pro from the anti EU argument.
As for the US health care system.Which part of massive amounts of UK doctors,are clearly voting with their feet,to leave the NHS,for the US system,because the US system is more ‘efficiently’ funded,didn’t you understand.On that note yes whatever problems the US system might have they are obviously a result of people paying in too little.Not what they are provided with for the money, unlike here.