Re: Sen. Harry Reid, NV: Wildfires caused by global warming

On Thu, 01 Nov 2007 02:35:25 -0700, Martin Brown
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

On Oct 31, 10:35 pm, Simon S Aysdie <gwh...@xxxxxx> wrote:
Martin Brown writes:
Strange that in the US it is dogma that only the
rich deserve to have a decent education or health
service.

and ...

I thought you were the typical selfish American that
believes that the state should do nothing and only
those whocan afford to pay privately deserve to get
a quality education or proper healthcare."

These are emotional appeals, but they just aren't true. I have lived
in the US my entire life and have never heard _anyone_ say anything
remotely like "only the rich _deserve_ an education."

They don't have to. It is trivial to price most people out of Ivy
league colleges now. And real geniuses with scholarships have some
difficulty fitting in with their extremely rich peers.

Nonsense; you make this stuff up. My kid goes to Cornell and I've
spent time there with her. There are very few "extremely rich" kids
there, as there are few extremely rich at Stanford or Harvard or UC
Berkeley. The many scholarship kids are indistinguishable from the
rest, and it's considered to be very uncool to flout the fact that
you're rich.



"what does it mean to 'deserve' an education?"

If you have the aptitude to benefit from it then society should invest
in first rate intellect. It is completely insane to only educate the
children of the rich and provide second or third rate education for
everyone else.

Get off this silly kick. It's not happening. In the US, a poor kid who
is good at a subject can and usually will find a way to get all the
education he can handle. The worst barrier to higher education isn't
money, it's language and cultural issues among racial minorities.


One consequence is that you end up with some absolutely
brilliant minds in the criminal underclass. Society doesn't care for
them and so the antagonism is reciprocated.

The rich don't inherently "deserve" an education any more or less than
anyone else. The basic fact of life is that they can afford it absent
funding from anyone else. This is not emotional -- it is merely a
fact of life that no two peoples situations in life are identical.
Life has no notion of "fairness."

I suspect that is where the difference between US and UK attitudes
exists. In the UK we do have a very real sense of "fair play" and
inherent natural justice.

Oh please... you've got to be joking. We have no royals, no lords, no
classes distinguished by accent. When's the last time you elected a PM
that didn't have a proper public-school accent?

John


.

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