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| why is the US not Metric |
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| SilverSolder:
--- Quote from: bsfeechannel on December 08, 2019, 06:11:45 pm --- --- Quote from: SilverSolder on December 08, 2019, 05:49:31 am ---Seems the senile old [Brexit] goats hark back to the days of EU v1.0 (...the Roman Empire, which ruled Britain, and imposed their pounds and ounces on the senile old goats' ancestors). --- End quote --- Holy crap! Blueskull is right. The West is decadent! What is amusing about the imperial lovers is that they want their units back because they want to cook their food using their grandmother's recipes or because they want to measure distances as the ancient Romans did. The ancient Romans traveled on foot from place to place, so it was only natural that they counted their paces, usually by the thousands ( Latin milia, hence mile), taking the military marching stride as a standard. Today we don't even ride horses, much less stride between places. So miles don't have any meaning for us, but we are still counting how many paces it takes from Des Moines to Rancho Cucamonga (31,700 to be precise). They keep saying that the metric system is always tyrannically imposed on the citizens, but they forget to mention that the UK adhered voluntarily to the metric system in 1965, before they joined the EU, and that this act itself was also voluntary. Their motivation is not only retrograde. It's also frivolous. This clearly indicates that the imperial system is not trustworthy. Pathetic. To say the least. --- End quote --- The issue with the "senile old goats" is that they dream of a country that no longer exists. I recall visiting England in the 70's, as a child. The country had permanent sunshine and blue skies. Its inhabitants were lily white boys in neat school uniforms that I played football (soccer) with every day, on vast expanses of green, fresh mown grass. An ice cream van appeared every day and provided all the children with their daily sugar fix. From that perspective, what could you possibly not like about England? Fast forward to today. The boys that played football in the everlasting summer are now at a stage in their lives where they can't read stuff on their cell phones without reading glasses. Their hair is thinning. They are generally overweight, overstimulated, and have to watch their blood pressure. Their doctors are telling them to take it easy. Can you blame them for longing back to the days of their youth? - and that is what sleazy politicians are trying to sell them. Vote for Brexit, vote for us, and we will take you back to the days of lily white happy faces you remember. The pounds and ounces thing is one of the many psychological tricks they use to help trigger those memories. |
| rstofer:
--- Quote from: boffin on December 09, 2019, 06:20:52 pm --- --- Quote from: rstofer on December 08, 2019, 03:51:23 pm ---... It's like that NHS thing. The standard of care in the UK is to get an appointment in 12 weeks. In 12 weeks I could be dead! I can get an appointment with my HMO for the same day if the triage suggests things are serious. I can go to one facility for everything except overnight stays. MRI, ECG, Lab, GP, Specialists are all in the same facility. For the more serious stuff, I can go to any hospital emergency room and the cost is covered by my HMO. Sure, it costs more than a buck ninety eight per month but it's worth it. All socialized medicine accomplishes is to drag everybody down to the same level of misery. Same as socialized anything else! --- End quote --- Spoken like someone who's drinking the USA Kool-aid. Have you ever considered that the reason you see reports that (incorrectly) report UK, Canada, France health care as all 12-week waits is that they're sponsored by the very insurance/health-care business who's livelihood would be affected if there were real change. --- End quote --- I don't live in Scotland but I can read their NHS guidelines: https://www.nhsinform.scot/care-support-and-rights/health-rights/access/waiting-times Worse yet, it appears that Scotland is not even meeting these low standards according to an article I read in Express.co.uk https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1214516/Nicola-Sturgeon-News-Scotland-NHS-Andrew-Marr-BBC-latest There is nothing government can do that is better than what private industry can do. Nationalizing anything is always a huge mistake! --- Quote ---If you have a serious issue, and you go into a hospital in the UK, in Canada, in France or almost any other 1st world country, you'll get treatment right away. As for 'any hospital emergency room', I'll bet you (and plenty of your American friends) have "out of network" issues, that just don't exist elsewhere in the 1st world. --- End quote --- The "out of network" thing doesn't apply to emergencies anywhere in the world under my plan. Now, true, once you are stable, they will be transporting you to an "in network" facility but not always. When I had my first stent installed back in '03, they sent me to an "out of plan" hospital because their own facilities were booked. Basically, for 'near' emergencies, you call the triage nurse, tell them what is wrong and they deal with it. Whatever they say is, by definition, the right thing to do and they don't leave you hanging. I've been with them since about '69 and I'm still on the green side of the grass. Just about everything will result in a same day appointment. I do sympathize with anybody covered by Blue Shield or Blue Cross but those aren't my plan. Just keeping up with the accounting is a nightmare. --- Quote ---Aaron Sorkin summed it up nicely in the 1st five minutes of the show "the Newsroom" https://youtu.be/wTjMqda19wk?t=94 --- End quote --- I loved that series! Olivia Munn is smokin'! Too bad it got canceled. It had a lot to say during each episode. |
| rstofer:
--- Quote from: SilverSolder on December 09, 2019, 06:32:00 pm ---The issue with the "senile old goats" is that they dream of a country that no longer exists. I recall visiting England in the 70's, as a child. The country had permanent sunshine and blue skies. Its inhabitants were lily white boys in neat school uniforms that I played football (soccer) with every day, on vast expanses of green, fresh mown grass. An ice cream van appeared every day and provided all the children with their daily sugar fix. From that perspective, what could you possibly not like about England? Fast forward to today. The boys that played football in the everlasting summer are now at a stage in their lives where they can't read stuff on their cell phones without reading glasses. Their hair is thinning. They are generally overweight, overstimulated, and have to watch their blood pressure. Their doctors are telling them to take it easy. --- End quote --- And with more money than our offspring will ever have. We pillaged the system, accumulated a butt-load of money in our 401(k)s and home equity and we sit back living off Social Security and our pension(s) not even needing to tap our retirement accounts. If it weren't for mandatory withdrawals (on the order of 8% per year) we would probably never need to touch the money. I'm using my mandatory withdrawals to pay for my grandson's college education. Nothing else to do with the money... There's nearly $25 TRILLION dollars in retirement plans - no wonder the .gov is looking for a way to get their hands on it! https://www.benefitspro.com/2015/06/30/total-retirement-assets-near-25-trillion-mark/?slreturn=20191109144620 We got ours, now it's your turn. Show us what you got! |
| KL27x:
:palm: :( :popcorn: |
| boffin:
--- Quote from: rstofer on December 09, 2019, 07:22:43 pm ---... There is nothing government can do that is better than what private industry can do. Nationalizing anything is always a huge mistake! ... --- End quote --- Healthcare The US has demonstrably worse Health Care than almost all other 1st world (government run) healthcare systems; as I mentioned; but you knew that already as you read my post. Let's look at the G7; and use the two most common measures of the effectiveness of healthcare systems. Life Expectancy (CIA World factbook 2017) Japan 2nd Italy 14th Canada 17th France 18th Germany 34th UK 35th USA 57th Infant Mortality (World Bank) Japan 6th Italy 10th Germany 19th France 22nd UK 24th Canada 28th USA 32nd and now compare that to costs yet the US spends the most per capita on healthcare (OECD 2017) United States — $10,209 - 1st Germany — $5,728 - 5th France — $4,902 - 11th Canada — $4,826 - 12th Japan — $4,717 - 14th United Kingdom — $4,246 - 17th Italy — $3,542 - 20th Coming dead last while spending twice as much is hardly a case for "There's nothing the government can do better than private industry" |
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