Yes to the below. USA is a strange society still coming to grips with the legacy of conquest, guns, slavery, class and race. I guess Brazil has a similar problem.
I guess there are no uber-humans after all, nor God chosen ones too :) -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jed Rothwell Sent: 07 September 2005 16:14 To: [email protected] Subject: RE: YK2, gurus, economics [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >Economic growth means Power, Water and Sewerage, Hospitals and Medicine, >Schools and Universities to provide a steady stream of professionals. Exactly right. It does. However economic power alone does not ensure health care or education. The U.S., for example, is the richest nation on earth, yet our overall health care is well below levels in China and Cuba, and our average educational attainments are dead last in every category. A few statistics: U.S. infant mortality rank: 43, according to the CIA world factbook. Infant mortality in Beijing is 4.6 per thousand; in Washington, DC it is 11.5. 29% of U.S. children were not covered by health insurance at some point during the last year. (In other developed countries in Europe and Japan this number is 0%.) Measles immunization rate, the U.S. rank is number 84, well behind China and most other developing countries. Polio immunization rank: 89. The statistics for dental care are a special horror story. A large number of children in the U.S. have never been to a dentist, and many people lose all of their teeth by age 30, which would be unthinkable in any other developed country. >That's what makes me angry about the left. Why does Africa have to be any >different? Because people there do not have access to capital, democracy and the rule of law. Micro-capital programs in Third World countries have done wonders to improve the economy. > Ultimately *it will have to* become an economic power and fend >for itself. > >On a micro-economic level what has the welfare cheque down for >Afro-Americans (and elsewhere?) - it lead to dependency. I have never understood this hypothesis. It seems completely counterintuitive and in opposition to all the evidence of daily life. Consider the largest class of people who have been "on welfare" for generations: the very rich. The Rockefellers, Roosevelts, Bushs, the European aristocracy, the Churchills, or -- to be honest -- 6-generation upper-middle-class college-educated people such as my own family. All of us as children have had every need taken care of: health care, tuition, special schooling if we could not hack public schools, special consideration getting into the finest schools (this is the policy at most Ivy League universities; children of alumni get special consideration), college and postgraduate training, a helping hand getting that first job, the finest drug treatment or mental health care when needed. Wealthy and middle class people have nothing to worry about. Life hands us everything we need on a silver spoon. Yet most are ambitious and hard working. If giving people money with no obligation and removing obstacles causes them to be lazy, then why on earth are people like William Clay Ford driven 12-hour workaholics?!? Thomas Jefferson was a irresponsible spendthrift who died broke, and he exploited his slaves unmercifully, but no one can accuse him of laziness, or lack of ambition. This hypothesis appear to be that giving rich people money and opportunity encourages them, while giving poor people money and opportunity discourages them. That makes zero sense. In point of fact, rigid meritocracy appears to be the best way to ensure overall wealth. This is the system in countries such as Ireland, Sweden, Iceland and until recently Japan. Public schools are superior in Japan all of them are funded at exactly the same level with exactly the same curriculum. Anonymous multiple-choice college entrance exams are the sole criterion for access to the best higher education and capital. For the past 20 years or so the system is broken down in Japan, and the gap between wealth and poverty is growing rapidly. >Why is it that any other immigrant community that comes into a country >rapidly with 2 generations becomes economically sufficient? Mainly because immigrant parents sacrifice everything for their children, giving them all advantages on a silver spoon, as I said. - Jed
