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Well, i'm definitely not a communist, but in reply to promethius, whilst charity may be a virtue, forcing people to rely on it is not. The role of the government is best kept minimal, I would agree with you there, but a government also has some sort of obligation for social policies.
As to your comment about lowering taxes etc, generally speaking (and espcially this current bush administration) the tax breaks are directed towards those that do not need it - heavily subsidised US industry and large corporations.
Also, I would probably disagree with you about America and Britain being totally different animals. The two economies are much more similar than for example Britain and the European countries. And yes, whilst it's true that in its past industries were heavily nationalised, that is no longer the case so these industries are now pricing fairly near to cost anyway. (not sure whether that's good either, witness the energy crisis in the US caused by a lack of capacity and a worryingly similar trend in the UK) But we managed 'well' also in terms of economic indicators without a minimum wage - it was only introduced by the current labour government.
Whilst it's all going down the pan a bit now as spending and borrowing gets out of control, we cannot take away from the fact that the introduction of the minimum wage here has coincided with a near unprecedented stage of economic success (compare the growth of a UK with a brief recession in the US, and large recession in Europe) whilst at the same time lifting large numbers of people out of poverty.
We use quite an interesting system over here, it would be good to compare. Here we use a system of negative income tax to guarantee a certain income. As income increases, benefits decline proportionately in order to guarantee a basic income. By doing it like this, there is no disincentive to work (eg from immediately losing all benefits and being worse off) and most benefits are in terms of services. The actual monetary value is small, but the poor can expect free prescriptions, free higher education etc etc whilst obtaining benefits is contingent upon training and active jobseeking. This ensures that the poor can still obtain the same skills as the rich, regardless of wealth and this allows them to contribute to the economy in the future. It certainly seems to be a reasonable middle ground between left and right.
[ 04-27-2004, 07:42 AM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]
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