Socialism in Venezuela has made illiteracy a thing of the past

I think what is being missed here is not even really a question of economic systems with their advantages and disadvantages. It is a conflict as to what people actually want their government to do for them, or whether they do not want anything to be done for them. At the extremes you have some conservatives who want no taxes, no public services, and a pure market driven economy with perhaps the government imposing fair trade laws etc.This won't work because the government (in so called socialist countries) is there precisely to supply services in areas where the market fails i.e. providing education for the poor, health care, pension guarantees, and varying amounts of welfare. The US does not provide shit for the economically disadvantaged (including millions of children) so that you basically have an enormous segment of the population living in third world conditions with almost no public services available i.e. 43 million uninsured Americans in what is supposed to be the pinnacle of pure capatalist success. (Amazingly, social conservatives seem to have no moral qualms with this discrepancy).At the other end, you do have those who want central planning of the economy since you have little incentive to actually do anything and a lot of incentive not to do anything. Germany is an example of a "socialist" country that has gone too far in the other extreme. By offering benefits such as extremely high pensions, welfare, and health care at a level that is unaffordable to the state, they are forcing their system into collapse. If they had paid any attention to demographics and economic cycles, they could have planned a milder reductions along the way to keep their system running but not at an unaffordable level.(Amazingly, social liberals in Germany have no moral qualms about the effects this overspending will have on their children and grandchildren).Somewhere in the middle of these extremes is likely an appropriate balance of a government that provides services for ALL of its citizens without centrally planning the entire economy and dampening the benefits of a free market economy i.e. by removing the positive incentives to start business and employ people in the private sector. But at the same time, not eliminating all government programs under some fairly tale wish that the market will some how rush to fill in the gaps and serve the different segments of society.Unfortunately, the influence of private lobbying groups, the willfull ignorance of most people in the US about any issue, and the painfully retarded presentation of "news" means that a proper debate about what people actually want from their government, what services they support, and a consensus of how to bring it about, is unlikely to occur any time soon.

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What a totally ignorant and false statement! Please tell us where American children (citizens not migrant workers or something like that) are living in Third World conditions. Maybe you don't understand what Third World conditions are.

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Detroit, parts of New York City, every major city in the US for that matter, the numerous trailer parks and rural areas with poor infrastructure, New Oreleans is a good example. Pull your head out of your butt randman and travel a bit around the world instead of living in your little neo con fantasy land. Almost none of the G7 countries have such wealth discrepancies, numbers of people living in slums, poor public services, lousy primary schools systems or such spotty health care coverage. There are more children (and adults)living in poverty in the US than virtually any country in Europe with the exception of some of the former Soviet states..and even they are pulling ahead. The standard of living of Germany, any country in Scandanavia, Austria, you name it puts the US to shame..and they have less money!

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Children in the United States have available free schools, free food if they cannot afford it, and free medical services and health insurance if they are poor.

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The children that don't have insurance are children to working families that have some money, but don't wish to or cannot afford paying for health insurance.

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So children have health care unless they come from a family that cannot afford healthcare? Jeez, you contradicted yourself in two sentences.

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So there are families living in homes, driving cars, eating well, etc,...hardly Third World conditions, making 30k-100K per year without health insurance because it is so expensive. That doesn't mean they don't get treatment as emergencies are treated even without insurance, and some pay out of pocket as it is cheaper than insurance.

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Now who is ignorant? This would be great if nobody ever got sick or just needed their teeth cleaned...but you tell a single working parent or a couple at the lower income level who cannot afford insurance (43 million of them) that paying for cancer treatments, a car accident, heart disease a hospital stay is something you can just pay out of pocket with no insurance....since you prefer personal anecdotes to actual relevant data, I'll give an example of the US health care service..a friend and I were on a trip to New York last year and she ended up in the hospital sick for two nights....cost her $3,000! They gave her the wrong treatment so she ended up in the hospital again, but back in Germany..she got the right treatment..it cost 10 Euros....and the German health care paid her stupid bills from the US.Oh yeah, and with the exception of the US, nobody in any of the G7 countries has to even worry about losing their health care and being faced with catastrophic bills after treatment without insurance...they are all covered, and so are their children.

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What you stated was wrong, and really a lie.

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So start being honest.

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Accusing your opponent of dishonesty...the telltale sign of a conservative with no arguement that they can support. That you reason that crack or other drug addicition or whatever is the only reason millions of children are not health insured is not dishonest on your part, but certainly willfully stupid.So here is something for your edification:http://www.mchb.hrsa.gov/mchirc/chusa_04/pages/0605ucM.htmNote the red states are not Republican voting..they are states with 12-23% of children uninsured.http://www.mchb.hrsa.gov/mchirc/chusa_04/pages/0604hiscT.htmIn this graph note that your sweetheart Bush's texas is the worst offender on the list for uninsured children at 23%http://www.mchb.hrsa.gov/mchirc/chusa_04/pages/0307cp.htmHere you have the percentage of children in the US living in poverty (not the total poverty rate).30% of poor children get no medical attention at allMedical and health informationAnd while some parents may not enroll their children in health care, under a national health care system they wouldnt freakin have to! They would be insured no matter what.So what you stated is wrong and really a lieAnd we have not even begun to debate other aspects of standards of living in which the US lags behind the rest of the developed world...I really don't give a rats ass if you lived in a slum ..you clearly have never seen anything of the world with which to make a comparison. The US simply does not stack up in terms of standard of living with the rest of the developed world...thus, it is largely like a developing country with some spots of great wealth concentrated among a few.

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You can find someone to create some pseudo-statistic all you want, but it doesn't change the truth.

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You mean someone like the federal institutes in charge of monitoring health profiles for the US and pediatrics groups? Yeah, pseudo statistics..LOL!...as opposed to the data you presented that rebut what I presented? Oh, I forgot, you did not provide any.You lose.

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Take the poverty indicator. Do you know how that is calculated? Basically, 90% of American children that "live in poverty" live far above what the middle class lives in much of the rest of the world.

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Yet another assertion without support.

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Your stats don't speak to that

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Because the stats speak to the actual situation in the US as opposed to your irrelevant personal anecdotes..you do realize that your anecdotes have no bearing on the situation for the people measured in these studies? It is like Bill Gates wondering why everyone else is not a billionaire.

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You mentioned Texas. Now, could one possibility that children in Texas are not as "covered" be that many are not actually American citizens???

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Any evidence to back up that they measure non-American citizens? Nope, didnt think so...and besides, Arizona, New Mexico and California all have buttloads of illegal immigrants and yet, their percentage of unisured children is almost half that of Texas.

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At the start of this, I pointed out that if you include migrant workers and non-Americans, there are issues and a lot of that has to do with the fact we have a very porous border down there, and as poor as you see these people, they see being poor in America as better than what they could have in Mexico.

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So how does that explain the lousy numbers from the rest of the country..or is our "porous border" with Canada the explanation for over 10% uninsured children in most of New England?..oh wait, Canada has national health care and are not coming to the US for our shit public services.

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So frankly, you are the one lying here, or at least obfuscating the truth and not being straighforward and honest.

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Another baseless assertion. At least I provided support for my arguements..you have not...so you demonstrate your own lack of ethics, morals and integrity..but to be fair, you have been lying in your posts since you joined this board so why stop now?...glad to see you sticking to your Xian principles

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The truth, which you claimed was a lie, is that only after you move up beyond the poverty line and beyond a low income, are your kids not qualified, and so it is the middle class that sometimes cannot or does not buy health insurance, and they are not poor.

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The truth which you claimed is a lie is that millions of children are uninsured in the US. You have not addressed this point and merely stuck you head in your butt to avoid dealing with it. But it is the truth and the reality.#

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The reasons are varied, but it is cheaper to pay out-of-pocket for medical expenses as long as you don't have a serious illness.

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Oh, yeah...I see your math skills are as poor as your knowledge of biology. It is cheaper to pay full price for each doctors visit than a $10 co-pay for each doctors visit when you are covered by an HMO? LOL!You are proving that another public service in the US has failed, the education system.