We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day – sell the NHS for scrap! The Americans are gaining healthy life years while we are losing them.
Hmm, that is interesting, no? Thus the UK requires more red in tooth and claw capitalism, more neoliberalism, obviously. Sell the NHS for scrap and go private!
And, well, but that’s not quite how American health care works, not for those over 65. That’s Medicare. Which is paid for by the government. But not supplied by the government. Which is a reasonable guide to what the problem is with the NHS. Tax paid health care is fine. It’s government supplied that is not.
At which point we gain our prescription – sell the NHS for scrap and have more neoliberalism. We’ll gain longer and healthier retirements by doing so.
– Tim Worstall
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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I would hazard a guess that the scrap value of the NHS is extremely negative. Ie we’d have to pay a stupendous amount of money to get someone to take it off our hands. If you could find a taker, which I doubt, because who would be that stupid?
Just to be pedantic: From the day of my first job to the day I retired, I paid in about 3% of my gross pay to the government as the Medicare tax. Now that I’m 70, it provides a base of payment for my healthcare needs. But I wouldn’t say that it was paid for by government.
(BTW, that’s also my outlook on Social Security, towards which I paid during that same half-century 12%+ of my gross pay to the government. Yes, I know they spent it as soon as I sent it in, but I still see that as a different system than welfare.)