>One of the many reasons the United States IS so great is because of the notion that men and women get to keep a larger share of what they earn. The entire country is based on the formal premise of LIBERTY, which includes economic liberty. These are RIGHTS, not privileges.
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>These RIGHTS may be God-given but I don't believe he is writing the checks. ;-)
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>Americans SHOULD pay taxes to support a police and military function, in recognizing men's self interest in supporting a system to protect their lives and freedoms. I also believe in certain public works. But beyond that, many forms of welfare should be abolished. (Tempting though it is, I realize you can't just flip the switch). But I hope to someday live in a country where the debate over "prayer in public schools" has died because public schools no longer exist.
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>Of course I understand the theory. FWIW I have associates who advocate minimum taxes such as a 1% or 2% money transfer tax as the only tax with consequences including greater employment and markedly reduced tax for most people with no drop in the tax take. apparently the math stacks up. Maybe you should start a middle ground political party with that as its single policy. IMHO you'd romp in. ;-)
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>But schools? Sheesh. Do you have a model where this sort of school privatization has worked in a large first-world state? How do you know it won't end up like the privatized US healthcare system that even Obama's opponents agree is too expensive and needing reform? Or is the existing school system so bad it needs to be messed with that drastically?

For years it has been stated in reports that admistration costs for Medicaid and Medicare were much lower than in the private sector. However, there are many hidden costs and when Centers from Medicare & Medicaid Services data from the Medicare enrollment database were examined by Robert Book of the Heritage Foundation, he found that Medicare administrative costs were 24.8 percent higher per beneficiary than costs for private insurers. It is not just the costs charged by the medical industry that need to be controlled, but the administrative costs as well. The disaster of Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security government management is what is so scary to most folks. There is absolutely no reason to believe, based on history here, that the government will handle a universal health care policy any better.

I still think we should bring in the Swedes to manage any universal healthcare system !! :o)

Some other things that must be taken into consideration when it comes to mortality rates and lower life expectancy rates, and quality of life is causation. One thing a truly free nation does is guaranty individual life choices and let's face it, a large portion of the country makes very poor health and life choices in general. So, because they choose to eat the unhealthiest diet, not exercise, do drugs, or to smoke, or to drink, or to avoid the doctor during their most healthy years (one of the reasons it is so expensive is the healthy do not in general pay into any private system), or any number of poor choices, does that make it acceptable to all here to force different choices on them?

So, when we start enforcing better choices on the public, where does it stop? One of the arguments is that the children should not be forced to suffer the bad decisions of their parents. So do we take away more money in tax dollars and start enforcing everyone to use food stamps to purchase food? Do we enforce a healthier diet on the general public by taking away the means to purchase anything else? Where does it stop? Do we add monitors paid by the state to go out and ensure the public is exercising? Do we charge penalites if they do not? Many insurance plans give discounts for healthy life choices, will the government plan do the same?

I stated before that I would really like to see a universal healthcare system here. It is not a right, but it is something that any 1st world country should be able to provide its citizens. Here however, we have so much waste in government programs that it would make more sense to clean up the system before we start committing ourselves to spending more. With the greatest deficit in history and one that cannot possibly be paid off unless extreme changes are made, it doesn't make sense to spend more. Our debt has huge political ramifications. It doesn't make sense to keep increasing the amount paid in for poor management. It's like throwing more money away. The system needs to be streamlined and cleaned up before more is added into it.