--- Message Received --- From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002 19:43:10 -0500 Subject: Re: Capitalism Forever?
Yoshie: Also, if a larger proportion of GDP is now spent on domestic programs than in 1965, isn't it because the OECD nations' populations are today older than before and aggregate expenditures on old age pension and health care have risen in keeping with the aging of the populations?
Greg: The aging population thing is pushed heavily here in Australia and while I have no facts and figures I would consider other factors perhaps playing a dominant role.
I worked for some time as a nurse in retirement "Homes" during the 80's. Both the homes and indeed general practitioners and many aspects of practical medicine have in that period become corporatisied, surrending healthy profits mostly drawn from the public purse (directly or indirectly). Private health Insurance here is a bit of a scam, as the public syustem picks up all the difficult cases and the insurance comapnies again make massive profits and provide very little tangible benefit.
In the last half-decade, unemployment benefits are now distributed through private organisations, again making healthy profits and providing very little in any real social benefit. Meanwhile the banks poach all forms of governement pension (acting as private tax gathers), public schools demand tution payments, private contractors now make profits from all ancillary services once provided by public schools themselves.
In otherwords looking at the micro level, I cannot see much evidence of any actual demographic responsibility of the growing costs and declining benefits of welfare expedinture, but I do see a lot of carpet-bagging.
Having worked both in the private and public systems (in health and education) and hating bureacracy, and due to a protestant upbringing dispising waste, I have to conclude that private corporatism makes goivernment bureacratism look thrifty.
I mean this seriously - waste is endemic to bureacracy of any kind. But corporate bureacracy does this in spades and seems far more short term then state bureacracies. Plus the inverse ratio between profits and actual service delivery has me quite stunned. Inevitably showing profits is a sign of health in these privatisied areas, at the same time you see actual services almost completly disappear.
Corporatisied doctors are already becoming notorious for subjecting patients to needless tests, is this the service that requires a fully trained doctor, after all I can send someone for all soughts of tests hoping to find something without any real knowledge at all. As a service for getting people well it declines in effect (reliance on tests tends to disguise the real aliment), while as a service for generating money it works rather well.
Greg Schofield Perth Australia g_schofield at dingoblue.net.au _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________
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Greg Schofield Perth Australia g_schofield at dingoblue.net.au _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________
Use LesTecML Mailer (http://www.lestec.com.au/) * Powerful filters. * Create you own headers. * Have email types launch scripts. * Use emails to automat your work. * Add comments on receive. * Use scripts to extract and check emails. * Use MAID to create taylor-made solutions. * LesTecML Mailer is fully controlled by REXX. * A REXX interpreter is freely available. _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________