Something socialist european countries have learned - that the US has mostly ignored, is the idea of wealth that is shared and enjoyed by everyone. In USia, it’s not really considered a fully maximized asset, unless an individual (often corporate) entity controls it outright.
If this country had its economic house in order, that would be the natural goal, the logical progression of things-to move from private wealth to public wealth as individuals grow more prosperous.
As it is, we treat hoarders of wealth very differently from people who hoard national geographics in their living rooms, and that serves to impoverish everybody.
I can certainly understand the sentiment. That said, all those wonderful universal plans in scandinavia and across europe are almost completely funded via capitalism and not socialism.
Yes, correct, and being paid for their effort. Capitalism.
I was stating a fact and not an assertion, bald or otherwise. Those countrie’s economies function under free market capitalism which generates the wealth they tax to pay for the healthcare. If I am mistaken and there is some socialist economic system somewhere in europe generating the capital to pay for their care I am certainly open to read about it and adjust my understanding. I am not saying that they should not use their taxes to pay for a national health system, it’s their taxes they generated being spent by the people they democratically put in charge on a program they like, so more power to them.
“A system functions under X and generates Y, therefore X generates Y” is not a valid construct.
Analogous constructions would be:
America functioned under slavery and generated wealth therefore slavery generated wealth.
Germany functioned under Naziism in the 1930s and 40s and made toothpicks, therefore Naziism makes toothpicks.
Moon rockets function under the force of gravity and get us to the moon, therefore the force of gravity gets us to the moon.
Capitalism does not pay for healthcare. The fact that capitalist countries have healthcare doesn’t prove otherwise, and is compatible with the idea that capitalism acts against the provision of healthcare.
The tax funds the residents of those countries use to pay for their healthcare are earned by them in a free market economy, collected by the administrators they hired, and spent by them on their health care.
Exactly. The form doesn’t work. It needs to be directly argued that X is the reason why Y is happening. That’s my entire point: that it requires argumentation to say that healthcare happens because of a market economy, we can’t just point to the fact of their mutual existence and say one causes the other. I’m glad we agree.
I’m still wating for an actual counterpoint that dissproves the fact that a capitalist system pays for their healthcare. I am open to being enlightened.
And let’s not forget that we can have healthcare without capitalism, too! Anything we have under the capitalist system, we can figure out alternatives for or someone in history prior to the rise of capitalism already has! That’s the wonderful thing about studying history… we can explore the myriad of ways, good and bad, that human beings have organized their lives collectively, figure out what worked, and what did not, and improve our current situation armed with that knowledge. It’s a never-ending process, probably, and there is no end of history (unless we wipe ourselves out), but maybe it’s about the journey and not so much about a destination anyway. All the really matters is the constant attempt to improve all of our lives…
Yes. Systems themselves earn nothing. I assumed that was understood.
A free market capitalist system that chooses to pay for social programs with their taxes is still capitalist since the government does not own the labor.
