Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Path: brunix!cat.cis.Brown.EDU!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!swrinde!pipex!sunic!trane.uninett.no!eunet.no!nuug!EU.net!uunet!hobbes!earth.armory.com!rstevew
From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: Does Automation Take Jobs Away?
Organization: The Armory
Date: Mon, 1 Aug 1994 02:33:58 GMT
Message-ID: <Ctu4Go.BH@armory.com>
References: <Ct8z84.np1@mozo.cc.purdue.edu> <1994Jul27.180501.13633@mixcom.mixcom.com> <Ctow3M.M1A@armory.com> <31chv4$cit@tribune.usask.ca>
Sender: news@armory.com (Usenet News)
Nntp-Posting-Host: deeptht.armory.com
Lines: 123

In article <31chv4$cit@tribune.usask.ca>, Henry Choy <choy@cs.usask.ca> wrote:
>Richard Steven Walz (rstevew@armory.com) wrote:
>: Gee, Germany has been doing fine. I suppose you think the Swedes are lazy.
>: I would say that Einstein was lazy, and he justified that human pasttime.
>: I think that leisure and time for thought is a human goal. Are you jealous
>: if someone achieves it???
>
>...and doesn't use it, just like the rich idiots that you like so much...
>
----------------
nonsensical.
-S

>: The Russians never had socialism, and now they are starving with capitalism
>: worse than ever. 
>
>Proof by example.
>
>: >It's OK to make jokes about how we should socialize unimportant jobs 
>: >like public telephone sanitizers and bolt tightners, but food production
>: >and health care are LIFE and DEATH issues.
>: -----------------------------------
>: Yes they are. That's WHY national health would benefit us. Every time the
>: vested interests say that the good results elsewhere in the world can't be
>: adapted to the "American" system, I realize they are simply trying to
>: forestall the demise of the insurance companies, one of the biggest scams in
>: all of capitalism!!! I mean, these entities OWN OUTRIGHT whole BANKING
>: systems and even their COMPETITORS!!! Insurance IS the biggest profiteer in
>: capitalism!
>
>Well heavens to betsy there must be an upper bound somewhere!
--------------------------------
What do you MEAN? You're drifiting into inane again.
-S

>: We spend over 13% of the GDP on health, and 27% pays for paper
>: shuffling. The Canadian system pays only 10% and their overhead for
>: paperwork is 1.5% of that! Italy is down to paying 8%!!! And they still
>: have FREE heart bypasses!!! (No Waiting, by the way!) If we spent only 10%
>: instead of 13%, we'd have the same services as now without cost containment
>: except restricting it to Standard of Living. We pay between 2.0 and 2.5
>: TIMES more for all drugs on average as is paid in US dollars for the same
>: drug in Europe!!!
>
>Part of the explanation for these figures is the high cost of drug
>development and health care research, most of that occurring in the
>US. Any US medicare taxes would be exorbitant.
--------------------------------
Common myth. You ignore the giant Swiss drug companies, and the firms that
began in Europe and merely expanded to the US. They are still there and
bigger than ever. The French have a lot of pharmaceutical research, I
suppose you've heard of RU-486? And the best human genome project is in
France where the code reading is done in 20% the time as here by automated
lab lines, one after another after another. And HIV was discovered in
France, when it was OUR problem more than theirs!
Lame.
-S

>: There's some more savings! WITH cost containment for fees
>: and supplies, we could knock that way down! The Canadian system thought
>: they'd have a mass of emigrating doctors. They didn't, because the USA
>: couldn't absorb them!!!:)
>
>Surely the increased doctor supply would drive down doctor prices
>leading to equilibrium.
-------------------------------------
Nope, the government just told them what they could make. A majority of
them are quite happy with it now that they see their office work is zilch!
-S

>: That's the market for you! It's time to organize
>: the entire American people into one self-insured group! ALL the rich are
>: self-insured. They'll tell you it's cheaper!! Of course it's cheaper, they
>: don't have to pay some bunch of idiots to sit and shuffle papers trying to
>: refuse claims!!! They don't have the stock holders sliding in to take a cut
>: and go golfing! Most of the difference between the current cost of health
>: care in America, and national single payer is the upkeep on pleasure
>: cruises and golf courses!!!
>
>Healthy living!!!!!! Cuts down the costs!!!!!!!
--------------------------------------
Prescribe it for everybody! Unresponsive!
-S

>: >I would be annoyed if we destroyed Ford, Chrysler, etc and only produced
>: >Trabants and bicycles, but,
>: --------------------------------
>: We may have to regardless for ecological reasons. But I think Ford can
>: figure out how to build good buses, and likely some solar vehicles and low
>: cost errand vehicles. And they might even learn how to make mag-lev trains!
>: They seem to learn everything else they say they can't when we make them!
>: If the people owned them,
>
>Can we say city hall, boys and girls? People prefer to drive Fords!
>Your pronunciation is "lemmings"?
---------------------------------
Again, inane and unrepsonsive.
-S

>: they would have the voice in saying what they
>: want, and not putting up with constantly changing fashion that isn't
>: anything but some art major showing off his new CAD program on the same old
>: chassis!
>
>
>: >I will leave this country when ^h^h^h if it falls apart, just like
>: >my ancestors left germany when it fell apart.
>: ------------------------------------
>: Where will you go?! I don't know about you, but my ancestors left Germany
>: to avoid conscription in the Franko-Prussian war! I can't think of anywhere
>: decent to live that isn't more socialist than we are and getting more so!:)
>
>Not getting socialist by Luddite knee jerk reactions though.
----------------------------------
You're the one who jumped to all this Luddite crap. My intended socialism
is a technological one!
-S

>        Henry Choy                       "Math class is hard" - Barbie
>e-mail: choy@cs.usask.ca                  I AGREE!
------------------------------
-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com

