Re: The Wisconsin Lie Exposed – Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Emplo
I do live there 2 months every year and speak with greater authority than you on the topic.
Do you realise how delusional that sounds?
Who give you the authority? You. Do you think that has any meaning on the internet?
Even if we were to take your words at face value, by what measure is "your authority"? How much time you spent in a developing country? 14 years here. Born there? Checked.
What does all that really means in this debate? Nothing.
Like I said, if there was a way to privatize every organization that you stated above, they would all run much better and be more efficient than they currently are. Lets take what prompted this thread to begin with; Education. When comparing public school performance to private school performance, the private schools perform a mean average of 4 to 18 points higher than their public counterparts (according to NAEP). Proof that the product is better but what about the cost?
Again using NAEP data, in 2004 the per pupil spending for public schools was $9,620 while the cost of private schools was $6,600 per pupil. Using this data, what conclusions do you derive? Private schools are able to educate students at a higher level and lower cost! Pretty much blows a hole in your theory that the public sector is better than the private sector.
Where are the links for those numbers?
And schools is not even on the list that I gave. I never claimed that the private sector can't do better than the public sector. You are one who make the broad claim that "Allow a for profit company to run some of these services I mentioned (without burdensome regulations) and
every single service would be much better and cheaper." Then you asked for example of what the government does better, and I've given them: services such as policing, judiciary, road, water sanitation, food safety regulation. You have yet to back your claim by showing that these are better provided for by the private sector.
Are you not the one who criticized my position and then told me to live in a third world country to enjoy their inferior services? When I informed you that I do sometimes live in a third world country and am intimate with the services they provide and tell you the services are not inferior you claim straw man? I ask you, do you always use the excuse of 'straw man' when you lose a debate?
I call it when I see it. I didn't claim that the "first world" must "beat third world" in every instance. You implied that I was, which is a strawman. I'm not delusional enough to believe that there are no services catering to rich people in developing country that are as good as the best in developed country. Are those services typical of the general population and it translates into better standard of living for the general population than in developed country? Hell no. You see, I'm not delusional.
And if you like it so much, I'm still wondering why you don't move there altogether, instead of just two months as you claim?
While I have never been to a medical facility in France, I have been to one in the UK (I lived in the UK while studying International Business) I can assure you health services are inferior to both the United States and Philippines. My girlfriend (at the time) broke her leg while riding a bike, she waited damn near 9 hours before seeing a doctor, a little under 2 hours for the x-ray and another 6 hours before she was fitted with a cast. After it was over the nurse said to me we were lucky to see the doctor at all as it was not very busy that day! WTF! Had I flown her to my doctor in Chicago instead of taking her to her British hospital. She would have still received the cast and been damn near home to Britain by the time we left the hospital. If France is anything like the U.K. I'll pass. Maybe you should get your facts straight.
Funny. It seems you don't even know the difference between fact and opinion.
Your subjective experience (hyperbold or not), are not facts. If they were, my nearly 4 years in the UK would be as good as any - and I found the NHS to be quite good compared to the insurance system in the US. However, my opinion is not fact, but these are objective enough to be acceptable to most people as fact:
The Commonwealth Fund -- Health Policy, Health Reform, and Performance Improvement
NHS satisfaction highest for over 20 years | Health Insurance magazine
NHS satisfaction highest in the world | Abetternhs's Blog
Those all show the UK and France performing better than the US, so I repeat, get your facts straight.
