We’re twelve hours into the collapse of the viaduct on the Dublin-Belfast line but nobody has yet stated the obvious. Isn’t this obviously a major step in a campaign to keep the Irish people patriotic? Next that damned motorway. It’s what Dev would have wanted.
OK, so apart from being glad that the Atlantic Ocean continues to expand, I do have one question about the healthcare reform ‘debate’ (if you could call it that) in the US. Why is the business community not lobbying like mad for universal state healthcare? I’m sure I’m missing something and would love to know what it is.
After all, it strikes me that, at least at the high end, American health insurance tends to be covered by American businesses, universities and the like. Why don’t they want to offload some of their costs to the state?
I assume that small businesses currently don’t provide healthcare insurance at all, so they are concerned at being taxed to provide a public plan, but why aren’t larger businesses lobbying in favour? Maybe American society never cottoned on to the flip side of Offe’s paradox: that welfare states are good for capitalism because they regulate societies through times of crisis. But why aren’t did business never make the calculation to nationalise these particular costs?
Answers in a postcard-shaped comments box please. I have a sneaking suspicion that a good answer would be longer than this question.
I suppose that this article in the Belfast Tele is getting in first where a lot of the week’s papers are going to follow. A good day for the FTSE and good results for the banks might mean the end of the banking crisis.
Not at all.
In the UK this is the end of the credit crunch wave of the banking crisis. The next wave, I’d guess at year’s end, will come when all those newly unemployed people run out of money and default on enormous credit card (also here), mortgage and sundry other debts. In other words, the financial banking crisis may be coming to a close, but the retail banking crisis is yet to kick in.
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