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Do not derail the thread with discussions about other topics like global warming. |
On March 13 2012 15:54 Arnstein wrote: It should be as in Norway, where we pay a good amount of taxes, but university, doctors etc. are free/very cheap.
Correct me if im wrong but one of the problems in Europe is that altho docs are cheap, they aren't very widely available, at least not compared with how things are in the US. Is this correct? I've heard that waiting times to see specialists are often many months or longer, whereas in the US one can pick and choose from dozens upon dozens of specialists in any one sub-field.
Not saying US health care is better by any means, but that's one point a lot of people overlook when going on about the nice things EU has
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In some parts of Germany (and many other european countries) university is free. I myself think that it is a huge hit for a society if it isn't since then money equals education and since good education gives you a good chance of good income, educated people have more money for the next generation. The clear and obvious downside is that poor people have VERY LITTLE chance to get rich, not even close to wealthy. That leads to those people not getting a chance of good education and suddenly you have a society like in the 14th century. It clearly is a step in the wrong direction if you ask me.
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On March 13 2012 21:46 DeepElemBlues wrote:Show nested quote +taxes are way more then enough to pay for education. and health care. 10 times over.
the problem is all the worthless other crap. like a hype war on terror. or all the parasites getting welfare while having a job off the books. Of course taxes are more than enough to pay for a limited amount of ventures in countries with highly developed economies that create a lot of wealth and have a relatively very minuscule population. Try expanding that to hundreds of millions of people, a large minority of them not creating enough wealth to pay for their share of the spending, and you have a problem. Show nested quote +Well not really. How it works is, if people want more they have to pay more tax. Most Scandinavian country are ok to make this trade, and it seems to work quite well. But you can't ask for more public services and want to lower the taxes. You have to make this trade. The other issue is what you do of the taxes, and in most countries it's not really effective to say the least. Scandinavian countries also have very strict limits on spending and borrowing and are small enough to get away with maintaining a relatively high welfare state through high taxation. That trade didn't work during the downturn of the 1990s, when the fiscal safeguards that are in place now were not in existence yet. And again, doing it for a few million or a few tens of millions is not something you can extrapolate to 300, 400, 500 million people of much different economic makeup. Show nested quote +What does that even mean? Only the piigs are in bad shape in Europe, and they're pulling down the rest because of the shared euro. Germany's finances are more than good otherwise, and have always been really. Free health care and university.
This is the fact for almost every European country. Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Poland etc etc.
I really don't understand these arguments when it's been in place for almost a hundred years at this point. How come it's always been going great for the countries with the highest taxation? No, it is not only the PIIGs that are in bad shape in Europe. Germany's finances are in good shape only as long as they don't keep giving handouts to the PIIGs, which is why Merkel is very reluctant to hand out any more. France's finances are in precarious shape thanks to their banks taking on too much PIIG debt. You can't just separate the Euro from everything else, one of the things the Euro was intended to do was to make it possible for the countries of southern Europe to spend like the countries of northern Europe without having the economy strength and spending safeguards that the northern countries do. How well is that working out? And honestly it's like people's memories start at 1995 and anything that happened before then doesn't matter, those countries you listed, throw in the UK as well, went through greater or lesser problems in the 1960s and 1970s thanks to their economies being unable to sustain the level of government spending and debt. I really don't understand these arguments that act like the economy will always be growing at 5-8% annually and history only started 15 or 20 years ago, completely ignoring the fact that it has not "always been going great" for these countries and actually is not "going great" now, Merkel and Sarkozy wouldn't be meeting all the time and handing out edicts left and right about what the PIIGs must do and what France and Germany will do to protect themselves and the economy of Europe wouldn't be projected to shrink this year if everything was working fine the way it has always worked fine according to fantasy remembrances of a past that never happened. The problem with the Eurozone isn't debt. Spain and Ireland had a surplus right before the crisis. The problem is that wages are too high in the PIGS and Germany exported too much too the PIGS, giving them a huge trade surplus, while giving the PIGS a huge trade deficit, because wages are too high so that their exports are not competitive. Germany is part of the problem, their wages are too low compared to the PIGS. This trade imbalance which caused the Eurozone crisis would hardly be a problem if there wasn't a common currency, simply depreciating the currency would solve most of the problem.
If debt is the problem why isn't Japan in crisis? Why are countries like Ireland and Spain with lower debt than the US in crisis?
Another thing to note is that a lot of money flowed into the PIGS when the Eurozone was formed, bringing down their interest rates and making the interest rate for all Eurozone sovereign bonds converge, because investors thought they all had the same risk since they're all on the Euro. And then when the crisis hit, all these rates diverged to essentially their pre-Eurozone values, they never really had the same risk. This is a prime example that disproves rational expectations, one of the key assumptions needed for free markets to work. Free markets can't work because people are stupid, they weren't smart enough to see same currency does not equal same risk, they are not rational.
The Eurozone economy is shrinking because Germany is forcing everyone to cut spending in a recession. Why would the private sector want to invest in an economy in recession when unemployment is up to 20% in some places? No one has money to spend on their products.
So this isn't the case of reckless government spending on public services. Not that education spending was ever significant anyway.
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On March 13 2012 22:15 FallDownMarigold wrote:Show nested quote +On March 13 2012 15:54 Arnstein wrote: It should be as in Norway, where we pay a good amount of taxes, but university, doctors etc. are free/very cheap. Correct me if im wrong but one of the problems in Europe is that altho docs are cheap, they aren't very widely available, at least not compared with how things are in the US. Is this correct? I've heard that waiting times to see specialists are often many months or longer, whereas in the US one can pick and choose from dozens upon dozens of specialists in any one sub-field.
Not sure how it is in other European countries, but in the Netherlands it's not nearly as bad as you describe. It does depend on which type of specialist you want to see, but usually the waiting time is a few weeks at most. For urgent matters it is much faster of course.
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On March 13 2012 22:15 FallDownMarigold wrote:Show nested quote +On March 13 2012 15:54 Arnstein wrote: It should be as in Norway, where we pay a good amount of taxes, but university, doctors etc. are free/very cheap. Correct me if im wrong but one of the problems in Europe is that altho docs are cheap, they aren't very widely available, at least not compared with how things are in the US. Is this correct? I've heard that waiting times to see specialists are often many months or longer, whereas in the US one can pick and choose from dozens upon dozens of specialists in any one sub-field. Not saying US health care is better by any means, but that's one point a lot of people overlook when going on about the nice things EU has
It can be like that, specially with Social Security which EVERYBODY has here and you can get medican attention. Myself (and most people with a somewhat high mid-high lvl) have private insurance so I usually dont have to wait at all.
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Even ignoring the obvious ethical problems of education level being determined by parental wealth, the most valuable resource for a country is an educated population.
I think it's pretty obvious that a wealthy society should be paying for education to a large degree, though specifics depend on country and there's no one size fits all policy you can put across the globe.
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On March 13 2012 22:28 FuzzyJAM wrote: Even ignoring the obvious ethical problems of education level being determined by parental wealth, the most valuable resource for a country is an educated population.
I think it's pretty obvious that a wealthy society should be paying for education to a large degree, though specifics depend on country and there's no one size fits all policy you can put across the globe.
I agree a well educated society is something to strife for even though the taxes will be high. Because an educated country will see the will probably be more democratic, have a richer culture and care more about the environment. It also creates a good discussion about the political topics that arises and by having a educated discussion that political issues will be at hand not some other side issues.
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At very least alternatives to college/university should be provided for free. It's quite clear that high school isn't enough for today's world.
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On March 13 2012 22:15 FallDownMarigold wrote:Show nested quote +On March 13 2012 15:54 Arnstein wrote: It should be as in Norway, where we pay a good amount of taxes, but university, doctors etc. are free/very cheap. Correct me if im wrong but one of the problems in Europe is that altho docs are cheap, they aren't very widely available, at least not compared with how things are in the US. Is this correct? I've heard that waiting times to see specialists are often many months or longer, whereas in the US one can pick and choose from dozens upon dozens of specialists in any one sub-field. Not saying US health care is better by any means, but that's one point a lot of people overlook when going on about the nice things EU has
Yes, there are waiting times, IF you want to do it without paying out of your own pocket, however if you're an urgent case or you choose to go private/pay yourself, then you get it done pretty fast and at least in my country there is lack of doctors but only because of the current space limits at universities, as well as the fact that majority wants to work in cities(towns) and not in the country although the pay would be better.
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On March 13 2012 21:46 DeepElemBlues wrote:+ Show Spoiler +taxes are way more then enough to pay for education. and health care. 10 times over.
the problem is all the worthless other crap. like a hype war on terror. or all the parasites getting welfare while having a job off the books. Of course taxes are more than enough to pay for a limited amount of ventures in countries with highly developed economies that create a lot of wealth and have a relatively very minuscule population. Try expanding that to hundreds of millions of people, a large minority of them not creating enough wealth to pay for their share of the spending, and you have a problem. Well not really. How it works is, if people want more they have to pay more tax. Most Scandinavian country are ok to make this trade, and it seems to work quite well. But you can't ask for more public services and want to lower the taxes. You have to make this trade. The other issue is what you do of the taxes, and in most countries it's not really effective to say the least. Scandinavian countries also have very strict limits on spending and borrowing and are small enough to get away with maintaining a relatively high welfare state through high taxation. That trade didn't work during the downturn of the 1990s, when the fiscal safeguards that are in place now were not in existence yet. And again, doing it for a few million or a few tens of millions is not something you can extrapolate to 300, 400, 500 million people of much different economic makeup. Show nested quote +What does that even mean? Only the piigs are in bad shape in Europe, and they're pulling down the rest because of the shared euro. Germany's finances are more than good otherwise, and have always been really. Free health care and university.
This is the fact for almost every European country. Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Poland etc etc.
I really don't understand these arguments when it's been in place for almost a hundred years at this point. How come it's always been going great for the countries with the highest taxation? No, it is not only the PIIGs that are in bad shape in Europe. Germany's finances are in good shape only as long as they don't keep giving handouts to the PIIGs, which is why Merkel is very reluctant to hand out any more. France's finances are in precarious shape thanks to their banks taking on too much PIIG debt. You can't just separate the Euro from everything else, one of the things the Euro was intended to do was to make it possible for the countries of southern Europe to spend like the countries of northern Europe without having the economy strength and spending safeguards that the northern countries do. How well is that working out? And honestly it's like people's memories start at 1995 and anything that happened before then doesn't matter, those countries you listed, throw in the UK as well, went through greater or lesser problems in the 1960s and 1970s thanks to their economies being unable to sustain the level of government spending and debt. I really don't understand these arguments that act like the economy will always be growing at 5-8% annually and history only started 15 or 20 years ago, completely ignoring the fact that it has not "always been going great" for these countries and actually is not "going great" now, Merkel and Sarkozy wouldn't be meeting all the time and handing out edicts left and right about what the PIIGs must do and what France and Germany will do to protect themselves and the economy of Europe wouldn't be projected to shrink this year if everything was working fine the way it has always worked fine according to fantasy remembrances of a past that never happened.
That wasn't really my point. My point was that relatively large countries such as Germany can pull it off, and they're still fine financially. The euro crisis has nothing to do with public health care or education. I've never said anything about a constant growth in economy. I'm saying that health care and education should be a basis of a society, not some unreachable luxury, which is the case in many countries. Scandinavia isn't in the Euro, so by northern countries I assume you mean Germany and France?
Why do you write Spain with a small S in PIIGS? =(
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On March 13 2012 22:45 Euronyme wrote:Show nested quote +On March 13 2012 21:46 DeepElemBlues wrote:+ Show Spoiler +taxes are way more then enough to pay for education. and health care. 10 times over.
the problem is all the worthless other crap. like a hype war on terror. or all the parasites getting welfare while having a job off the books. Of course taxes are more than enough to pay for a limited amount of ventures in countries with highly developed economies that create a lot of wealth and have a relatively very minuscule population. Try expanding that to hundreds of millions of people, a large minority of them not creating enough wealth to pay for their share of the spending, and you have a problem. Well not really. How it works is, if people want more they have to pay more tax. Most Scandinavian country are ok to make this trade, and it seems to work quite well. But you can't ask for more public services and want to lower the taxes. You have to make this trade. The other issue is what you do of the taxes, and in most countries it's not really effective to say the least. Scandinavian countries also have very strict limits on spending and borrowing and are small enough to get away with maintaining a relatively high welfare state through high taxation. That trade didn't work during the downturn of the 1990s, when the fiscal safeguards that are in place now were not in existence yet. And again, doing it for a few million or a few tens of millions is not something you can extrapolate to 300, 400, 500 million people of much different economic makeup. What does that even mean? Only the piigs are in bad shape in Europe, and they're pulling down the rest because of the shared euro. Germany's finances are more than good otherwise, and have always been really. Free health care and university.
This is the fact for almost every European country. Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Poland etc etc.
I really don't understand these arguments when it's been in place for almost a hundred years at this point. How come it's always been going great for the countries with the highest taxation? No, it is not only the PIIGs that are in bad shape in Europe. Germany's finances are in good shape only as long as they don't keep giving handouts to the PIIGs, which is why Merkel is very reluctant to hand out any more. France's finances are in precarious shape thanks to their banks taking on too much PIIG debt. You can't just separate the Euro from everything else, one of the things the Euro was intended to do was to make it possible for the countries of southern Europe to spend like the countries of northern Europe without having the economy strength and spending safeguards that the northern countries do. How well is that working out? And honestly it's like people's memories start at 1995 and anything that happened before then doesn't matter, those countries you listed, throw in the UK as well, went through greater or lesser problems in the 1960s and 1970s thanks to their economies being unable to sustain the level of government spending and debt. I really don't understand these arguments that act like the economy will always be growing at 5-8% annually and history only started 15 or 20 years ago, completely ignoring the fact that it has not "always been going great" for these countries and actually is not "going great" now, Merkel and Sarkozy wouldn't be meeting all the time and handing out edicts left and right about what the PIIGs must do and what France and Germany will do to protect themselves and the economy of Europe wouldn't be projected to shrink this year if everything was working fine the way it has always worked fine according to fantasy remembrances of a past that never happened. Scandinavia isn't in the Euro, so by northern countries I assume you mean Germany and France? Actually 2/3 of the Scandinavian countries are in EU^^, Sweden not using the euro.
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On March 13 2012 16:06 Craton wrote: There's no such thing as bringing the value or worth of education down. There are a ton of relationships between the level of education in a society and it's overall well-being with things like health, economics, etc.
when you pay 110,000 for an education but working at walmart stocking shelves because you cant find a job. yea those loan bills coming in son what you gonna do? i already know what your going to do. live in a piece of shit house with little spending money if any at all and wish u had of joined the military and be halfway to retirement driving a new ride with a system in it. don't talk shit unless you know shit. open your eyes your just an average troll.
or am i?
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Education in the u.s is pretty expensive compared to here, it costs the equivalent of 10k dollars to get my engineering degree, and if you study pretty hard you can get it done for a lot lower. Whats more, if your a minority, you dont even have to study that hard to get that lower fees. I was quite shocked when I looked at the fees for an m.s degree. But then, a lot of things are a lot more expensive in the u.s than here, so it might be a natural progression of that.
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Magic Woods9326 Posts
On March 13 2012 22:48 TanTzoR wrote:Show nested quote +On March 13 2012 22:45 Euronyme wrote:On March 13 2012 21:46 DeepElemBlues wrote:+ Show Spoiler +taxes are way more then enough to pay for education. and health care. 10 times over.
the problem is all the worthless other crap. like a hype war on terror. or all the parasites getting welfare while having a job off the books. Of course taxes are more than enough to pay for a limited amount of ventures in countries with highly developed economies that create a lot of wealth and have a relatively very minuscule population. Try expanding that to hundreds of millions of people, a large minority of them not creating enough wealth to pay for their share of the spending, and you have a problem. Well not really. How it works is, if people want more they have to pay more tax. Most Scandinavian country are ok to make this trade, and it seems to work quite well. But you can't ask for more public services and want to lower the taxes. You have to make this trade. The other issue is what you do of the taxes, and in most countries it's not really effective to say the least. Scandinavian countries also have very strict limits on spending and borrowing and are small enough to get away with maintaining a relatively high welfare state through high taxation. That trade didn't work during the downturn of the 1990s, when the fiscal safeguards that are in place now were not in existence yet. And again, doing it for a few million or a few tens of millions is not something you can extrapolate to 300, 400, 500 million people of much different economic makeup. What does that even mean? Only the piigs are in bad shape in Europe, and they're pulling down the rest because of the shared euro. Germany's finances are more than good otherwise, and have always been really. Free health care and university.
This is the fact for almost every European country. Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Poland etc etc.
I really don't understand these arguments when it's been in place for almost a hundred years at this point. How come it's always been going great for the countries with the highest taxation? No, it is not only the PIIGs that are in bad shape in Europe. Germany's finances are in good shape only as long as they don't keep giving handouts to the PIIGs, which is why Merkel is very reluctant to hand out any more. France's finances are in precarious shape thanks to their banks taking on too much PIIG debt. You can't just separate the Euro from everything else, one of the things the Euro was intended to do was to make it possible for the countries of southern Europe to spend like the countries of northern Europe without having the economy strength and spending safeguards that the northern countries do. How well is that working out? And honestly it's like people's memories start at 1995 and anything that happened before then doesn't matter, those countries you listed, throw in the UK as well, went through greater or lesser problems in the 1960s and 1970s thanks to their economies being unable to sustain the level of government spending and debt. I really don't understand these arguments that act like the economy will always be growing at 5-8% annually and history only started 15 or 20 years ago, completely ignoring the fact that it has not "always been going great" for these countries and actually is not "going great" now, Merkel and Sarkozy wouldn't be meeting all the time and handing out edicts left and right about what the PIIGs must do and what France and Germany will do to protect themselves and the economy of Europe wouldn't be projected to shrink this year if everything was working fine the way it has always worked fine according to fantasy remembrances of a past that never happened. Scandinavia isn't in the Euro, so by northern countries I assume you mean Germany and France? Actually 2/3 of the Scandinavian countries are in EU^^, Sweden not using the euro. Neither do Norwegiens
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On March 13 2012 22:48 TanTzoR wrote:Show nested quote +On March 13 2012 22:45 Euronyme wrote:On March 13 2012 21:46 DeepElemBlues wrote:+ Show Spoiler +taxes are way more then enough to pay for education. and health care. 10 times over.
the problem is all the worthless other crap. like a hype war on terror. or all the parasites getting welfare while having a job off the books. Of course taxes are more than enough to pay for a limited amount of ventures in countries with highly developed economies that create a lot of wealth and have a relatively very minuscule population. Try expanding that to hundreds of millions of people, a large minority of them not creating enough wealth to pay for their share of the spending, and you have a problem. Well not really. How it works is, if people want more they have to pay more tax. Most Scandinavian country are ok to make this trade, and it seems to work quite well. But you can't ask for more public services and want to lower the taxes. You have to make this trade. The other issue is what you do of the taxes, and in most countries it's not really effective to say the least. Scandinavian countries also have very strict limits on spending and borrowing and are small enough to get away with maintaining a relatively high welfare state through high taxation. That trade didn't work during the downturn of the 1990s, when the fiscal safeguards that are in place now were not in existence yet. And again, doing it for a few million or a few tens of millions is not something you can extrapolate to 300, 400, 500 million people of much different economic makeup. What does that even mean? Only the piigs are in bad shape in Europe, and they're pulling down the rest because of the shared euro. Germany's finances are more than good otherwise, and have always been really. Free health care and university.
This is the fact for almost every European country. Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Poland etc etc.
I really don't understand these arguments when it's been in place for almost a hundred years at this point. How come it's always been going great for the countries with the highest taxation? No, it is not only the PIIGs that are in bad shape in Europe. Germany's finances are in good shape only as long as they don't keep giving handouts to the PIIGs, which is why Merkel is very reluctant to hand out any more. France's finances are in precarious shape thanks to their banks taking on too much PIIG debt. You can't just separate the Euro from everything else, one of the things the Euro was intended to do was to make it possible for the countries of southern Europe to spend like the countries of northern Europe without having the economy strength and spending safeguards that the northern countries do. How well is that working out? And honestly it's like people's memories start at 1995 and anything that happened before then doesn't matter, those countries you listed, throw in the UK as well, went through greater or lesser problems in the 1960s and 1970s thanks to their economies being unable to sustain the level of government spending and debt. I really don't understand these arguments that act like the economy will always be growing at 5-8% annually and history only started 15 or 20 years ago, completely ignoring the fact that it has not "always been going great" for these countries and actually is not "going great" now, Merkel and Sarkozy wouldn't be meeting all the time and handing out edicts left and right about what the PIIGs must do and what France and Germany will do to protect themselves and the economy of Europe wouldn't be projected to shrink this year if everything was working fine the way it has always worked fine according to fantasy remembrances of a past that never happened. Scandinavia isn't in the Euro, so by northern countries I assume you mean Germany and France? Actually 2/3 of the Scandinavian countries are in EU^^, Sweden not using the euro.
Sweden and Denmark are in the EU, none of the Scandinavian countries are using the euro, which is what I said.
Edit. My nick is unrelated.
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On March 13 2012 22:58 Euronyme wrote:Show nested quote +On March 13 2012 22:48 TanTzoR wrote:On March 13 2012 22:45 Euronyme wrote:On March 13 2012 21:46 DeepElemBlues wrote:+ Show Spoiler +taxes are way more then enough to pay for education. and health care. 10 times over.
the problem is all the worthless other crap. like a hype war on terror. or all the parasites getting welfare while having a job off the books. Of course taxes are more than enough to pay for a limited amount of ventures in countries with highly developed economies that create a lot of wealth and have a relatively very minuscule population. Try expanding that to hundreds of millions of people, a large minority of them not creating enough wealth to pay for their share of the spending, and you have a problem. Well not really. How it works is, if people want more they have to pay more tax. Most Scandinavian country are ok to make this trade, and it seems to work quite well. But you can't ask for more public services and want to lower the taxes. You have to make this trade. The other issue is what you do of the taxes, and in most countries it's not really effective to say the least. Scandinavian countries also have very strict limits on spending and borrowing and are small enough to get away with maintaining a relatively high welfare state through high taxation. That trade didn't work during the downturn of the 1990s, when the fiscal safeguards that are in place now were not in existence yet. And again, doing it for a few million or a few tens of millions is not something you can extrapolate to 300, 400, 500 million people of much different economic makeup. What does that even mean? Only the piigs are in bad shape in Europe, and they're pulling down the rest because of the shared euro. Germany's finances are more than good otherwise, and have always been really. Free health care and university.
This is the fact for almost every European country. Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Poland etc etc.
I really don't understand these arguments when it's been in place for almost a hundred years at this point. How come it's always been going great for the countries with the highest taxation? No, it is not only the PIIGs that are in bad shape in Europe. Germany's finances are in good shape only as long as they don't keep giving handouts to the PIIGs, which is why Merkel is very reluctant to hand out any more. France's finances are in precarious shape thanks to their banks taking on too much PIIG debt. You can't just separate the Euro from everything else, one of the things the Euro was intended to do was to make it possible for the countries of southern Europe to spend like the countries of northern Europe without having the economy strength and spending safeguards that the northern countries do. How well is that working out? And honestly it's like people's memories start at 1995 and anything that happened before then doesn't matter, those countries you listed, throw in the UK as well, went through greater or lesser problems in the 1960s and 1970s thanks to their economies being unable to sustain the level of government spending and debt. I really don't understand these arguments that act like the economy will always be growing at 5-8% annually and history only started 15 or 20 years ago, completely ignoring the fact that it has not "always been going great" for these countries and actually is not "going great" now, Merkel and Sarkozy wouldn't be meeting all the time and handing out edicts left and right about what the PIIGs must do and what France and Germany will do to protect themselves and the economy of Europe wouldn't be projected to shrink this year if everything was working fine the way it has always worked fine according to fantasy remembrances of a past that never happened. Scandinavia isn't in the Euro, so by northern countries I assume you mean Germany and France? Actually 2/3 of the Scandinavian countries are in EU^^, Sweden not using the euro. Sweden and Denmark are in the EU, none of the Scandinavian countries are using the euro, which is what I said. Edit. My nick is unrelated.
Ah my bad, I thought Finland was a Scandinavian country. And I didn't notice where you were from, my bad as well
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I think subsidizing higher education or at least offering it for free is absolutely justified, even necessary. Higher education equals significantly better payment working after university, thus more taxes paid. Long term, the subsidies are an investment that actually pays for itself in higher tax revenue. Also, from a countries point of view, education is a resource that can easily be monetized. I personally don't think a small country like germany could be one of the leaders in worldwide export trade and technology without free access to higher education for everyone wants it and qualifies for it.
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On March 13 2012 22:15 FallDownMarigold wrote:Show nested quote +On March 13 2012 15:54 Arnstein wrote: It should be as in Norway, where we pay a good amount of taxes, but university, doctors etc. are free/very cheap. Correct me if im wrong but one of the problems in Europe is that altho docs are cheap, they aren't very widely available, at least not compared with how things are in the US. Is this correct? I've heard that waiting times to see specialists are often many months or longer, whereas in the US one can pick and choose from dozens upon dozens of specialists in any one sub-field. Not saying US health care is better by any means, but that's one point a lot of people overlook when going on about the nice things EU has
Non urgent matters a few weeks, sometimes months if that particular department of your local hospital is backed up or under staffed. There's a three month rule, so they try hard to accomodate you and find time for a visit within that time frame.
A big factor that should be taken into account when it comes to waiting times in countries with socialized medicine, at least when it comes to most hospitals here in Sweden, is that a lot of the departments have a policy of calling patients in certain age groups for regular interval visits. My mother, who works as an ophtalmologist, remarked that they'd have a much shorter waiting list if they'd merely settle with notifying patients that they're due for a checkup and then let the patients contact the hospital themselves for a doctor's appointment time.
The way they work now, they call children in for regular visits and elderly people above a certain age (can't remember exact limit). If the patient fails to show up, they have to pay a fee of about ~$50, and then the hospital administration has to spend time and resources calling them to reschedule.
It's just a difference in philosophy between privatized and socialized systems. My mother would rather would rather move towards the privatized system in having more responsibilities shifted to the patient (in contacting the hospital for scheduling and rescheduling etc). But at the same time that approach would make a significant chunk of the population ignore their checkups and/or screenings. It would make Sweden's preventive care system less effective.
If you want instant health care though, there are private clinics in most European countries just as there are in the US. If you've got the money, pay.
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As a Finnish person, the concept of education not being free is really bizarre to me tbh.
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