Tax and Spend? Help People -- or Kill Them!
Bush has a rather more favourable starting point: the strongest economy in the world and a welfare state which is, to British eyes, laughably parsimonious. Social security costs consumes 4.4% of America’s economic wealth - in Britain, it stands at 8.2%.
Take, for example, the last study showing that 12.5% of Americans lived in poverty last year - up from 12.1% the year before.
[The above are excerpts from the Sunday Scotsman which I posted yesterday - again below. I first became conscious of the vast difference in the relative support systems of Britain and the U.S. through having worked first as a teen in the Bethnal Green Community Center in the East End of London with many kids (my age) who were partial war orphans. They were well fed and Britain had been at work reconstructing the bombed out housing there, which had been a primary Nazi target area - designed (unsuccessfully) to demoralize the Brits. Five years later I worked in a comparable poverty area in the Manhattanville Community Center in West Harlem with another little group of young teens who were 'welfare' orphans (fathers banned from their homes by the 'no man in the house welfare rule' following their loss of jobs to the returning war veterans) constantly hungry, forced to steal to eat, not medically treated, living in deteriorated tenements, and destined all but 3 of a dozen to die violently by their 40s. I saw then and see now the horrendous contrast between societies that give a damn for their poverty level inhabitants (Western Europe) and ours, which wishes them either incarcerated or dead by one means or another -- inadequate medical care to execution. And then there are our killing games abroad -- Viet Nam, Panama, Iraq . . . ? And we wonder why the world is beginning to despise us? Christians???? Ed Kent]
"Thatcherism - Stateside" is written by Fraser Nelson and has some great insights into what the new attack on social programs in the U.S. is really all about. It's wonderful because it comes from the viewpoint of a person who lived under Thatcher...and the big question in the U.K. is "what CAN you cut...your social programs are practically non-existent anyway"... [sent on by Joy Catherine]
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1448142004
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
Take, for example, the last study showing that 12.5% of Americans lived in poverty last year - up from 12.1% the year before.
[The above are excerpts from the Sunday Scotsman which I posted yesterday - again below. I first became conscious of the vast difference in the relative support systems of Britain and the U.S. through having worked first as a teen in the Bethnal Green Community Center in the East End of London with many kids (my age) who were partial war orphans. They were well fed and Britain had been at work reconstructing the bombed out housing there, which had been a primary Nazi target area - designed (unsuccessfully) to demoralize the Brits. Five years later I worked in a comparable poverty area in the Manhattanville Community Center in West Harlem with another little group of young teens who were 'welfare' orphans (fathers banned from their homes by the 'no man in the house welfare rule' following their loss of jobs to the returning war veterans) constantly hungry, forced to steal to eat, not medically treated, living in deteriorated tenements, and destined all but 3 of a dozen to die violently by their 40s. I saw then and see now the horrendous contrast between societies that give a damn for their poverty level inhabitants (Western Europe) and ours, which wishes them either incarcerated or dead by one means or another -- inadequate medical care to execution. And then there are our killing games abroad -- Viet Nam, Panama, Iraq . . . ? And we wonder why the world is beginning to despise us? Christians???? Ed Kent]
"Thatcherism - Stateside" is written by Fraser Nelson and has some great insights into what the new attack on social programs in the U.S. is really all about. It's wonderful because it comes from the viewpoint of a person who lived under Thatcher...and the big question in the U.K. is "what CAN you cut...your social programs are practically non-existent anyway"... [sent on by Joy Catherine]
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1448142004
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
posted by Ed Kent at 9:52 AM
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