Sidebar: Private versus Public Healthcare

Iā€™m not going to argue for the chap, I disagree with him on a lot of things, but I respect his honesty and dedication

Thatā€™s generally the sort of ludicrous category your opinions fall into.

I think FFG have done enough damage to the free stateā€™s health service already.

That is an opinion that should be taken seriously, the levels of ignorance around it should be studied and understood. The main proponents of it stem from your country, which screams at a broken education system. A denial of scientific fact.

Youā€™ll probably respond with a my country is Ireland quip. You hide behind your dual nationality quite a bit when it suits you

Iā€™m far from a communist. But you canā€™t deny the communists had a bloody good point about a lot of things.

You donā€™t have to be a Marxist to realise that Marxist analysis gets more relevant by the day. A hell of a lot of capitalists realise that too.

2% of Americans believe the earth is flat, there are idiots everywhere. Most of them are 18-24 which is interesting in itself. It has nothing to do with the education system, some people just donā€™t take education seriously.

I donā€™t hide behind anything, Iā€™m proud to hold citizenship in two great countries.

Widespread belief in the US that the earth is flat is an inevitable by-product of the capitalist idea of the ā€œmarketplace of opinionsā€, which reduces the worth of opinions to that of commodities, ie. how much reaction they can get.

Obviously stupid or abhorrent opinions tend to attract more reaction, and are thus of a ā€œhigher valueā€, at least according to capitalism.

The fact that 2% (conservative estimate) of young Americans are idiots (your words) and donā€™t take the education system seriously isnā€™t a reflection on the education system. Okay mate

Well this is quite the problem.

On the one hand you have a lad here advocating for a Cuban system. Cuba pays its healthcare workers very little and farms them out as slaves to earn foreign currency. It just doesnā€™t happen anywhere else and is not a reasonable comparison. The U.K. and France are.

If we want to talk about costs in the Irish healthcare services, look at the salaries of the workers. You canā€™t both simultaneously be calling for a Cuban system and good pay for workers, it just doesnā€™t work.

You also canā€™t be calling for Medical Cards for all with no one off costs and then be shocked that A&Es are clogged up. Thereā€™s a reason why you have to wait a couple of weeks for a GP appointment in the U.K.

Slaintecare is signed up to by all main parties in Ireland as far as I know. Itā€™s the approach weā€™re taking so should be rallied around by all. The idea that there is a one size fits all approach is a fallacy and will lead to another HSE.

Are you denying there are people who donā€™t take education seriously? Did you go to school yourself? Ever came across anyone that didnā€™t take education seriously? Do you think itā€™s the fault of teachers that some kids have zero interest in education, or their parents for that matter?

Iā€™m beginning to think youā€™re a bit of an idiot.

You think everyone who isnā€™t you is a bit of an idiot, eventually.

The anger is never far from the surface

Youā€™ve argued an opinion shouldnā€™t be taken seriously and here you are taking it very seriously, after two posts.

Explain how an education system is to blame for students who have no interest in education.

The same chap who thinks academia in the US is a liberal conspiracy thinks thereā€™s no problem with the teaching of creationism in schools. You couldnā€™t make it up.

The education system cannot be divorced from the media environment. In the US, there is a mass media bullshit industry which is squarely designed to make people stupid, to turn them into good little zombies. This mass media bullshit industry is overwhelmingly right-wing.

Everybody in Ireland is familiar with the media bullshit industry in Britain and what it does to people, and the real world effects of that. Yet the influence of the bullshit industry in America is exponentially larger than in Britain.

The media bullshit machine is capitalism in its purest form. When millions of people believe the earth is flat, that is capitalism in its purest form in action.

Underpaid, undermotivated public school teachers who have to worry about getting shot in the face as well as teaching calculus

Deflection.Youā€™re ignoring the fundamental question.

Focus on Ireland as you should at least know something about the education system there. There are plenty idiots in Ireland, social media is full of them. Is the education system in Ireland to blame for the level of ignorance of these people?

Human beings are shaped by generations of cultural capital. The US has spent generations vilifying and destroying the already marginalised. When children grow up shaped by the belief and indeed the knowledge that they have little life prospects because the system they exist in has been trampling all over them for generations, then what do you expect to happen?

US right-wing ideology is about portraying the poor as morally inferior, because that is the flip side of an ideology which is obsessed with portraying the rich as morally superior.

The brilliant Sarah Kendzior sums it up:

When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and the poor. But poverty is neither a crime nor a character flaw. Stigmatise those who let people die, not those who struggle to live.

Yes. But our education system is far better than yours and there are a lot less of them

Obviously there are less idiots in Ireland as the population is 5 compared to 330 million. On a % basis youā€™d have to come up with some basis for your claim, which you donā€™t have. Like a few others on here your view of the US is based on what you see on TV or social media, so sensationalism.

Irelandā€™s education system through second level of better than the US, I would agree with that. Third level is very good here though, and Iā€™m pretty sure the % of people with third level education is about the same in both countries, 40-45% of 25-65 year olds.

Oh no there isnā€™t

You used the flat earth % as a idiot spirit level. Do you want to go find one for Ireland?

Do people get shot in schools in America on a regular basis?