Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2013 December 16

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December 16

Healthcare - Socialized or Privatized?

I've yet to form an opinion on whether healthcare should be socialized or privatized. I'm looking for two books, each advocating for one of the positions. Any recommendations? 74.15.137.253 (talk) 04:50, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

You may also need a third book, advocating a mix of government and private involvement. That's a pretty common model. HiLo48 (talk) 05:12, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

For an explanation of how the NHS was arrived at, read the Beveridge Report which recommended its inception. --TammyMoet (talk) 14:56, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

It's similar to the advantages of privatization versus socialization, in general. That is, privatization may do a better job for the rich, while socialization does a better job for the poor. StuRat (talk) 15:03, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

You've got it right, and that's why the wealthy often oppose socialized medicine, as it runs counter to their core philosophy of Social Darwinism. (That's the "let them die and decrease the surplus population" philosophy.) There is also a somewhat middle ground, if you happen to be working for a company or other organization that provides health care benefits. I've often heard that referred to as "privatized socialism". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:30, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

• Not only covers medicine, but all aspects of free market versus socialist policies: George Reisman's college textbook Capitlaism, available as a free download here: http://www.capitalism.net/. μηδείς (talk) 17:22, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
  • One unfortunate side effect of national health care that turns up here from time to time is the notion that people shouldn't go to doctors unless they "really have to", as otherwise they will be "bothering" the doctor. That puts the patient in the business of being his own doctor, which is human nature, for sure, but is nearly as risky as taking medical advice from anonymous internet users. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:38, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Really? As opposed to not going to a doctor because you can't afford it? Give me a break. Anyway, the OP asked for books. All I can say is, make sure to include plenty of European books to get a sensible point of view on these issues. 82.21.7.184 (talk) 19:44, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

You haven't seen many of the "medical advice" debates. I'm appalled at how often some editors talk about not "bothering" a doctor when you can find free advice [and worth the price] within Wikipedia. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:46, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

It's a real issue. In Britain, which of course does have (broadly) free-at-the-point-of-use health care, there was a situation in which people would make regular appointments with a doctor for a chat about their general state of health, which became something of a burden on the system. Likewise some people would choose not to make appointments precisely because they believed it was their social duty not to overburden the system and waste the resources of the community as a whole. Both are real problems produced by such a system, and it is equally difficult for the health service itself to find an effective strategy to deal with it. The system potentially finds itself sending the confusing message "don't waste doctors' time if you think there's probably nothing wrong with you, but please don't delay in contacting one if you think you may have something wrong with you". Paul B (talk) 21:00, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Nevertheless, Britain, despite the perceived shortcomings of the NHS and the heavily drinking Glaswegians, has a higher life expectancy than the US. 86.128.183.4 (talk) 23:17, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Is there any evidence that 79 years vs. 77 years average lifespan (or 81 vs 80, depending on the chart) is a statistically significant difference? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:10, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes! Of course. Look at the sample size. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:47, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

You'd have to run a statistical analysis to determine whether 79 vs. 77 in this sample is statistically significant. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:47, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I ran it in my head. It is. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:11, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I found some stats for counties in Britain at [1] (graphic [2]) - looking at the regionalization clarifies the complexity of such a question. There is certainly substantial homogeneity in individual regions of Britain, suggesting the number is quite significant (after all, a huge sample size!) yet the difference between regions shows that the difference is not just one country vs. another. Which leaves some question as to causality. Still, it's not a bad sign for the NHS. Wnt (talk) 04:25, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Incidentally, I have not yet seen any evidence that knowing more about your health (even if it is not enough to do competent diagnosis) is a bad thing. My expectation continues to be that we all diagnose ourselves before any doctor does, because we all decide on our own whether to go or not before anything else happens. Wnt (talk) 04:27, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

You may have more luck if you refer to so-called 'socialised' healthcare as 'public' or 'national'. Most British people would not recognise the term 'socialised medicine' unless they were familiar with the cliches of American political discourse. AlexTiefling (talk) 00:38, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Basically, socialized medicine leads to superior health outcomes for everyone, rich or poor. Privatized medicine - meaning basically the US model - leads to inferior health outcomes for everyone, but a greater rich/poor gap, so the wealthy can feel good about how they are better than lesser people. However, irrational economic theories have historically led to substantial (government) underspending in societies with "socialized medicine". The US system squanders a great deal of money in the health care sector, which of course in the context of demand-constrained economies, the norm, will improve overall economic efficiency and lessen unemployment. See James K. Galbraith's The Predator State. Clearly the sensible thing, according to most usual ideas, would be to have a free-spending socialized medicine system. But that has become very scarce since the end of the Post–World War II economic expansion.John Z (talk) 11:03, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

As with any good or service with near inexhaustable demand, healthcare provision is all about rationing. It may be rationed by price (USA), by delivery time (UK), by quality (China, et al) or by some combonation of the three. DOR (HK) (talk) 16:51, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Help figuring out original source for James Dubro

I found an archived full length piece about him at William Armstrong Percy III's website: 1st page, 2nd page. But I'm not having much luck in finding the original article, author, or publication (could be US or Canadian). Anyone up for a challenge? Sportfan5000 (talk) 07:18, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

It's Canadian, anyone have a clue? Sportfan5000 (talk) 22:14, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Great British Novel

What novels by British authors have been considered as the British equivalent of the Great American Novel? By which I mean, novels which capture some kind of unique British experience. English novel would be a starting point. --Viennese Waltz 15:28, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Definitely all the Victorians in that article: Dickens, Thackeray, the Brontes, Eliot, Hardy, Trollope. Itsmejudith (talk) 15:43, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Or, for a more humorous take, but one that captures a moment in time, see: P. G. Wodehouse bibliography. Blueboar (talk) 15:46, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

This thread at www.online-literature.com mentions Dickens, the Brontes etc., and also adds D.H. Lawrence's Women in Love and Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. More bizzarely, some contributors proposed The Lord of the Rings and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Gandalf61 (talk) 16:45, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure why either of those choices is bizzare... Did Britons stop writing quality novels after 1930? --Jayron32 18:33, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Well in the first place, many would argue that those novels are not literary fiction. More importantly, they don't meet the criterion for a Great British Novel (which I've simply taken by substituting 'British' for 'American' in the GAN article. --Viennese Waltz 19:39, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

In the Nineteenth Century, the great Victorian novelists: Dickens, Trollope (The Way We Live Now), and Thackeray (Vanity Fair).

In the Twentieth Century, only the great Kim and Brideshead Revisited. If you wanted to stretch a point, The Forsyte Saga and A Dance to the Music of Time, but both of those are multi-volume works rather than single novels, and second-rate compared to Kim and Brideshead.

The Twenty-First Century has got off to a cracking start with two novels that both inform and are informed by the state of the nation: Tony Blair's A Journey and Alastair Campbell's Dodgy Dossier. Eager fans of fiction await the report of the Chilcot Inquiry.

It's interesting that two wonderful novels - The Go-Between and A High Wind in Jamaica - are excluded from the 'English novel' article. So is John Fowles, intellectual in tone but now rather dated, perhaps. We could add Rupert Graves' novelisations of Seutonius -I, Claudius and Claudius the God - he (Graves) going progressively more bonkers as he aged, but his books hardly capture the contemporary zeitgeist. It's certainly true to say that the ambition and ability of English novelists has declined from the high Victorian peak; almost nothing written post-war (arguably, post-First World War) seems likely to stand the test of time other than the dystopian visions of Orwell and Peake (and, in the second tier, Burgess, Huxley, Wells and Wyndham).

(So, in answer to Jayron, above, 'Did Britons stop writing quality novels after 1930?', yes, almost completely, with the exception of Evelyn Waugh and L. P. Hartley.) Nowadays the public education system is so poor that the literature most indicative of the era is probably Jordan's novels (celebrities and sex), which, together with the oeuvre of Ian Fleming (alcohol and sex) and Jilly Cooper (a middle-class person's idea of an upper-class lifestyle and sex), define the interests of the age and also helpfully act as an aid to masturbation. 86.183.79.28 (talk) 20:23, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Interesting that you mention Fowles. What inspired me to ask this question was reading Daniel Martin, which the blurb describes as "an exploration of what it is to be English". Perhaps a case could be made for that as a GBN, although it seems rather too fixated on a narrow subset of English life (Oxford, the theatre, the BBC, London flat, agreeable house in the country) to be truly regarded as representative. --Viennese Waltz 12:30, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

You need to include Irish authors published between 1801 and 1921.
Sleigh (talk) 20:39, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Ireland was never part of "Britain", though it was part of the United Kingdom. Still, if an Irish writer created a novel about British life and identity, it could reasonably be included. I should think there's no doubt about the book that would be top of the list for "Great Irish Novel" - Ulysses. But even though the book was "published between 1801 and 1921" (just), I can't see it being considered a GBN by many people. Paul B (talk) 20:46, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Irish life between 1801 and 1921 was British.
Sleigh (talk) 21:10, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Repeating yourself does not make your claim any more true. Look up the definition of Great Britain. Paul B (talk) 22:07, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Alternatively, look up the definition of British Isles. The word "British" has several different meanings, and it is not obvious which one of them the OP intended. --ColinFine (talk) 23:19, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

I certainly did not have Irish literature in mind. Paul B is right, Ulysses is the great Irish novel but no way can it be considered British. --Viennese Waltz 08:53, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

See also Terminology of the British Isles for a more comprehensive insight into this can of onomastic worms. :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:06, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

I think the concept of the "Great American Novel" is itself so characteristically American that it's hard to conceive of a UK equivalent. The UK has produced great novels, but the idea that one of them might stand as a monolithic cultural testament would not be taken seriously by most people. AlexTiefling (talk) 00:39, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

All of Dickens's novels stand as monolithic cultural testaments. Charles Dickens was fated in both the United Kingdom and the United States.
Sleigh (talk) 02:30, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Fated to be famous. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:40, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

What Jack is hinting at is that the right word is "feted". Clarityfiend (talk) 08:13, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

I'll throw a contemporary work into the pot: Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh. --TammyMoet (talk) 14:12, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

That's a very interesting question, Viennese Waltz. People don't really talk about the "Great British novel" - see this Guardian article[3], which poses the question: "The Great American Novel is one of the peaks of world literature, so why is there no British equivalent?" As it points out, "Britishness" is a rather amorphous and contested concept. There are, after all, three different nations in Great Britain, with distinct cultures and histories. I doubt the Scots and Welsh would regard an English novelist as reflecting their experiences.

Even if we just confine ourselves to seeking "the Great English novel", the diversity of experiences within England - class differences being particularly significant here - makes it difficult to select one novel. Regional differences are important too - the experiences of Londoners are not the same as the experiences of Northerners etc. Indeed certain great writers are associated very strongly with a particular region - Thomas Hardy is undoubtedly "the Great West Country novelist." Dickens is probably the closest England has to a national novelist, and he remains so popular and quintessentially English because he managed to capture a broader range of experiences than most other novelists - not just the rich, but the hardships and injustices suffered by the industrial working class. But it would be hard to anoint just one of his novels (perhaps Great Expectations or Hard Times if forced to choose?) - it's more his (large) body of work as a whole.

In short, there are lots of great British novels, but "the Great British novel" does not exist. Neljack (talk) 07:06, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

The idea of the Great American Novel began from a felt need: the man who wrote the essay that started the meme believed there was no such thing, and wondered when and even if it could come about. England and France, he said, had their Great Novels, but America was perhaps too immature. So there's your answer - the Great English/British Novel, and also the Great French Novel, already existed, and American novelists were being asked to go and do likewise. (The essay in question is here: http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/articles/n2ar39at.html)PiCo (talk) 00:08, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I think that is to confuse great British novels with "the Great British novel". Neljack (talk) 00:53, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I think not. People and things from the island of Great Britain are British, not "Great British". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 01:36, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Ah, I see I failed to capitalise "novel" - amazing the difference a capital can make! Neljack (talk) 10:07, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Productivity

All things being equal, would an increase in national productivity lead to higher wages or cheaper products (or some combination of the two)? The reason I'm asking is, I'm wondering if a worker benefits from higher national productivity even if his hourly wage hasn't changed. 74.15.137.253 (talk) 23:21, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

A productivity increase could result in higher employer profits with no wage increase or product price cut. A rise in productivity doesn't automatically cause a wage increase or price cut... AnonMoos (talk) 01:07, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

That subject came up on the radio just today. Productivity is generally always to the benefit of the company, not to the individual. It's a practical result of the management philosophy of getting "more for the same, or the same for less". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:08, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

It could result in higher profits, higher wages, no change, lower wages or lower profits. Fifelfoo (talk) 02:31, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Workers haven't gotten a real wage increase in a long time. →Σσς. (Sigma) 03:12, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

The next obvious question from that chart is why were wages and productivity seemingly linked at one point in time, but are seemingly decoupled in another period of time. Fifelfoo (talk) 04:33, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Probably a lot of reasons, but some of the more important would would be decline of labor unions, rise of globalism and "financialism", restructuring of U.S. tax codes to favor the wealthy (though this last didn't take hold until the 1980s), etc. AnonMoos (talk) 08:30, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. Before globalization, labor unions could use any increase in productivity to demand higher wages and benefits, most likely at the next contract negotiation. But now the company is likely to lay people off instead, since they no longer need as many workers to do the same job. Combine this with the long term trend of sending jobs overseas, and increased productivity worldwide may be quite bad for the workers. However, if productivity increases in Western nations, and not in third-world sweatshops, then that might somewhat slow the outsourcing trend. StuRat (talk) 08:38, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Richard Wolff suggests in this video that a labour shortage in the US ended around the time when the wages flatlined. →Σσς. (Sigma) 09:48, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Right, and globalization solved the labor shortage, thus allowing US companies to pay lower wages. I advise young people to get degrees in areas which can't be offshored, like nursing (hard to change a bedpan from China). StuRat (talk) 10:24, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

It is hardly a coincidence that the outsourcing is done in countries where unionization would be next to impossible. Corporate-level capitalism is really nothing more than the feudal system in a three-piece suit. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:39, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

• The entire discussion above is a bunch of Marxist gobbledygook. Increased productivity in a free market leads to lower prices due to competition. Increased profits either have to be invested in capital, which requires laborers, meaning higher wages, or is drained off by the owners in unproductive spending by them, which is still recycled into the economy since they hire servants and buy things from productive employers. μηδείς (talk) 01:46, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
  • It doesn't work that way anymore, because it's no longer a "closed system". Why should they hire Americans at, say, 10 dollars an hour when they can hire Bangladeshis at, say, a dollar a day? And when they suffer a Triangle Shirtwaist-like fire, the golden rulers say, "Oh, well, whatever. It's the price of a 'free market' economy." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:45, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

So much for the socialist solidarity of the proletariat. Your attitude is, eff the Bangladeshis, I have mine? μηδείς (talk) 22:28, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

The theoretical discussions are fine, but we also have to ask how productivity is measured. There may be proxies involved. The wages bill may be an input into the productivity measure, thus leading to circularity, i.e. high wages cause high wages. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:27, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

If really : "All things being equal" then the answer is no. But when productivity changes, so many other things are influenced that it becomes too complex to put predict with any certainty even into a large econometric computer model. Apart from productivity, lots of external factors, also influence wages and prices. DanielDemaret (talk) 10:43, 20 December 2013 (UTC)