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» babble   » walking the talk   » labour and consumption   » Health Care: Thin Edge of the Wedge...

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Author Topic: Health Care: Thin Edge of the Wedge...
DrConway
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 490

posted 18 September 2006 12:37 AM      Profile for DrConway     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
... for interventionist economic policies? Heretical thought, no?

What's Really Propping Up The (U.S.) Economy

quote:
If you really want to understand what makes the U.S. economy tick these days, don't go to Silicon Valley, Wall Street, or Washington. Just take a short trip to your local hospital. Park where you don't block the ambulances, and watch the unending flow of doctors, nurses, technicians, and support personnel. You'll have a front-row seat at the health-care economy.

The reason I cite this article is that health care is one of the sectors of the US economy that is, as the article states, playing the central bread-and-butter role that manufacturing used to do. As a result, it is an excellent place to start in constructing interventionist policies.

How?

In Canada, health care is still largely a government matter. For this reason, interventionist economic policies can be structured around the health-care sector, using it to prop up output and employment, especially in regions of Canada where natural resources are not employing significant numbers of people.

This is win-win for the NDP, especially as health care is a sector that needs to have a lot more money and a lot more people thrown at the problem, just as in times of old, transportation infrastructure was the mainstay of Keynesian policies to soak up excess capacity and build something everybody could use, into the bargain.

Thoughts?


From: You shall not side with the great against the powerless. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594

posted 18 September 2006 12:28 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
What's Really Propping Up The Economy
Since 2001, the health-care industry has added 1.7 million jobs. The rest of the private sector? None

Wow!

That Business Week article reminds me of what James Galbraith said about the American economic model in 2003. James is the son of renowned economist, JK Galbraith.

quote:
The US economic model that commands around a third of the world’s wealth fascinates and infuriates Europeans. But both reactions reveal ignorance of its most essential features. The keys to its success lie not in industry, but in those sectors providing social amenities to the middle class – health care, education, housing and pensions: systems of provision that have little to do with the free market.

I think our economy in Canada could be surging ahead into the future if we could just put our two old line parties on ice for a couple of decades or so.

[ 18 September 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged

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