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To: Vicomte13
You have some good points. I will need to look into your values more. If you have references to your numbers, please list them.

I don't completely agree with your conclusions. You assume that the government pays for all health care, education, and child care for all of the French people setting the addition to the GDP to zero for your arguments. This is similar to assuming that the US government pays for all of pre-collegiate schools for children and Medicare for the elderly. Not all people elect to take part. Private schools exist in France and the US. The quality also needs to be taken into account. If we analyze just by dollar values, the US will win due to the lower per capita GDP of France. If we analyze due to the quality, France will win in some areas (secondary schools operating more efficiently) and lose in others (nonessential medical care).

In conclusion, I need to reevaluate my argument. You brought up some good points, but intuitively I believe the argument favors the US economic system. I can come to no conclusion based on the numbers that we have presented so far.
54 posted on 05/27/2005 11:09:28 PM PDT by burzum
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To: burzum

My numbers were pulled from published government expenditure sources for the US and France on the web.
I did some arithmetic, for example subtracting out 4.6% of GDP government expenditure on health care from the 15.3% total health care expenditure in the US, in order to arrive at the 10.7% that must come from the private economy.

Yours is a good point that there is a gap in French insurance coverage which is borne by the individual or paid for by private insurance. There are some private schools and creches, mostly for religious people or for problem children who are expelled from the public system for rowdy behavior. The most elite schools in France are, of course, public.

Of course when trying to assess the different health care systems qualitatively, it is difficult to find comparisons. Longevity and infant mortality seem the most objective to me.

Likewise when attempting to assess the overall quality and utility of public education fulfilling its primary role to socialise children and impart proper rules of conduct and knowledge into them, it is difficult to measure. To me, murder and violent crime rates seem the most objective number. If young men are properly socialized, they will not kill or attack people. However, I expect that there will be objections to whatever criteria are used.

The thing which disturbs me most about the American approach is the extent to which it is driven by debt. American business and individuals are taxed less, but approximately the same level of social services are offered for most (certainly not all) people in the US economy. France taxes more. Both countries spend in the ballpark on government and services. There is no question that the US taxes less...but then it funds these services that it pays for with interest-bearing debt. The low taxes "juice" the American economy - the power of leverage - but leverage only works until the payments catch up with you. I do not worry about the sustainibility of the French model, although obviously it would be better were employment to be improved by making the workplace and capital availability more supple. But I do worry that the American government itself, and industry, and even foreign trade, produce the higher returns that they do because of this insidious debt leveraging, which eventually creeps up in interest due until you cannot do it anymore...and then there is massive debt with slow growth for a long, long time to pay it.


59 posted on 05/27/2005 11:27:46 PM PDT by Vicomte13 (Et alors?)
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