Luigi Zanasi wrote:
On Sep 23, 3:45 am, "Upscale" wrote:
You feel free to question my integrity by calling me evil and a thief solely
based on the fact that I benefit from country wide universal health care. I
know it's all you have.

I just want it on the record that I am quite happy that Upscale can
benefit from the taxes I pay to support universal health care, and
that I actually would not mind all that much to pay more if it
improved my fellow citizen's access to health care.

He is in no way stealing from me, no more than anyone who benefits
from a program that we the people, in our wisdom or lack thereof, have
voted in favour of through our duly elected representatives.


How about the likely millions of your fellow citizens that do not share
your eleemosynary spirit? It's one thing to volunteer to help - most
all of us have done that in one way or another in our lives. It's
quite another to be forced to do so by law.

Thought Experiment: Assume there was no national healthcare in your
nation. Would you willingly send part of your paycheck to people you
do not know, are not in your circle of family and/or friends, and otherwise
strangers? I say the answer based on the charitable giving in the US
and Canuckistan is a resounding *YES*. People DO like caring for others.
Upscale and others that share his worldview act as if in the absence of
government force there would no help available at all. It's utterly
false. In actual fact, when people have more money in their pocket, they
give more to charity. The real reason that charity-at-the-point-of-a-gun
is so popular is twofold:

- There bulk of the citizenry gets more out of social mooching programs than
they put in. They've been taught that taking something that is not yours
is wrong unless they take from people that are rich. Since there are way
more poor- and middle-class people than wealthy ones, mooching almost always
manages to pass. The current US debate on healthcare is not a mooching vs.
no-mooching debate. It is a debate about *what kind* of mooching and whether
or not the existing moochers will win or lose in the proposed changes.

- The political creatures love mooching programs because they can: A) Buy
votes with them and B) Attempt social engineering that suits them.

All in all, social programs are an unholy mess. I applaud your willingness
to help your fellow man. I share that with you. What I do not share is
a willingness to have some malignant politician decide for me just who should
get what I've worked for and how much. I want to make that kind of call
for myself...

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Tim Daneliuk
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