Quote:
Originally posted by Khazadman Risen:
But Shamrock we have been trying some of the loony things the left wants to force on us. Like Johnson's idiotic war on poverty. Trillions were spent on it, yet we still have poverty.
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Hmm...i'm not sure a war on poverty is an idiotic thing to try however...
I remember a French minister giving a rebuttal to the criticism by an American one over the new EU working time directive (which limits the number of hours per week somebody can work) and he said (roughly, my memory fails me) "in Europe, we judge the success of our economies not by how close it is to a capitalist ideal but by the amount that somebody has to work to have a good standard of living". (One of the most sensible things i've heard coming out of a French minister for a while that!). Thus we largely avoid the issues that are discussed in the 'working poor' thread.
Sure, our productivity may be slightly lower than the US, but it's the price we pay for supporting those who can't support themselves. As long as there are decent measures in place to prevent benefit fraud I cannot see what any 'decent' human being (please don't think i'm passing judgement, just my opinion) can have against it.
Linking to Chewie's post, perhaps it is the polarization (for want of a better word) between left and right in the US that means things like the above are almost taboo. In the UK for example, our left-wing parties have some right-wing policies and vice versa - this (asides from being a pain at election time) seems to be a very sensible system, because both parties are free to adopt the best policies for a given situation. In the US that doesn't seem to happen to the same extent.
That's why when if i ever end up arguing with American's in a right-wing forum over foreign policy for example, i'll be labelled a bleeding-heart liberal, even though I would consider myself standing to the right of centre. There's no flexibility in the American system, so everybody who criticises one aspect of a right-wing government automatically gets associated with the extreme left-wing. It's like Israel branding people anti-semitic for criticising their activities in Palestine and not understanding that it's perfectly possible for one to be anti-zionist without being anti-semitic. In order to solve America's poverty problem, the whole country needs to understand that you don't have to be a liberal in order to worry about a welfare state and bring some compassion to a capitalist system.
Edited and added for clarity
[ 05-07-2004, 04:56 PM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]