Why are you amazed? More government control seems to work much better in those specific areas.Riggerjack wrote: ↑Sun Oct 13, 2019 9:41 amIt just amazes me how some folks can look at markets distorted to the edge of functionality by government interference, and then endorse more government control.
Pretty much all the metrics indicate that the American system is super shitty in terms of “value for dollar”.Riggerjack wrote: ↑Sun Oct 13, 2019 9:41 amHow functional are those systems you enjoy, on a balanced budget? It's a lot easier (and popular!) to extend service, if one can pay the bills with I.O.U.'s.
Find the outlier in this graph:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life ... xpenditure
I am a huge admirer of the USA, and all things considered it would be my #1 choice to spend the rest of my life by a pretty significant margin, but the heath are system is broken, and the cause is certainly not “too much government”, as all functioning healthcare systems across the globe are heavily controlled by the state.
There are some areas of the economy where either
1- reasoning in terms of “return of investment” or “profits” is not the point and is actually counterproductive (healthcare)
2- the return on investment is so far out in the future that only governments see the interest. No private enterprise would build public roads, or just think about the French TGV project:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGV
Started in 1966, operational in 1981, IIRC broke even somewhere in the late nineties, when France started selling the technology across the globe.
Now a major source of profits for the French state.
No private enterprise would embark in a project that takes thirty years to break even