Workers, and anyone who works, creates wealth. Period. Capitalists do not create wealth, they are parasites; they control wealth, they do not produce it, they don't even indirectly add wealth to society. The directors and managers who do work add indirectly to wealth.

If workers do not create wealth, then there would be no need to fear workers who unionize. The reason the capitalists fear unionization (and therefore the best weapon that workers have, the strike) is because they know damn well that wealth is only created when workers do work. When strikes occur, and no work is done, then no wealth is created. Everyone knows this to be true, it is self-evident.

Loading the argument by insisting that profits are only used for seemingly trivial ends (instead of for, say, investment in the business or other businesses, which creates more jobs) is a cheap rhetorical trick, but let's go with it. That "fifth or sixth mansion" has to be planned, built and maintained by somebody, which of course means more jobs. I say hurrah for the rich and their superficial lifestyles. It makes more work for the rest of us...

You have a weak grasp of economics. A couple years ago, I went to visit the Palace of Versailles (near Paris). This was the palace that King Louis XVI had built. The tour guide told us that a huge portion of France's GDP was used to build and maintain the palace grounds, and the roughly five thousand aristocrats who lived there at any given time.

I bring this up because King Louis did in fact employ many artisans, architects, and laborers; but the accumulated wealth that the palace represented did not benefit the people of France, it was privatized, and consumed only by those who were of high birth. The same amount of labor power that the King used to build the palace could have been spent on the people, and the same labor-power (wealth) could have fed, housed, and clothed many more people, thus spreading the wealth, and using that same wealth for more good. The reason that the French people rose up and overthrew the aristocrats was precisely because more and more wealth was being concentrated in the hands of fewer people. So that fifth or sixth mansion could have been used to do so much more in the public sector.

You need to read Marx's works, specifically, Capital, Volume 1, in which he lays out the foundations of his theories. What we are witnessing now in the US was predicted by Marx and his writings explain why.

Really, sweetheart, do you stay up at night howling at the moon? I mean, really...you can't really believe what you post. If the health insurance industry kept down costs and provided a good service relative to Medicare or other single-payer systems throughout the industrialized world, then there would be no controversy, no bills in Congress, and no discussion of the issue on Salon. Everyone would be happy and there would be some other issue to bitch about.

...to find a whore on almost any issue or subject. Boustany's experience as a surgeon is completely irrelevant. The medical journals are replete with studies showing the high cost and not-so-favorable outcomes of the US wealthcare system. Clearly, the for-profit system we have in the US compares unfavorably with other systems around the industrialized world. Boustany will not give us a scientific analysis, but rather pure propaganda aimed at scaring the 80% of Americans who don't have passports and therefore never go anywhere, who never talk to foreigners in the rich countries who do have higher quality healthcare.

There is absolutely nothing in his speech that interests me.

Used to be my rep before I moved.

She is a lying sack of shit and a despicable, rotten human being.

The Republicans have never had, do not have, nor will ever have any incentive to reform healthcare. Period. Get it?

Congress and Obama, as you have pointed out, are serving up huge piles of shit against the interests of the vast majority of Americans. Literally, it is time for REVOLUTION to throw out these fuckers and replace them with people who will serve in the interests of the majority. If this were France, the country would shut down in a general strike. If only Americans had the guts and organizational capacity to do the same. Sad, we can only blame ourselves in the end, as Americans refuse to wake up and take control.

I like getting fucked up the ass, but not this way.

I predicted this MONTHS ago (read letters thread) that there would be no public option, let alone a single-payer system (which we desperately need). We will have a mandated system where everyone will have to have insurance, which is like manna from heaven for the insurance and drug industries, who are going to make a windfall profit. There will be NO mechanisms to keep down costs, just like in Massachusetts, which is an unmitigated disaster.

I only cursorily read the text of Obama's speech. I knew it would not amount to anything. As I predicted before the speech, we will get:

1. mandated insurance - manna from heaven for drug and insurance companies

2. no public option

3. no cost controls

4. cosmetic changes to insurance so they can't deny pre-existing conditions

5. you can still go bankrupt

ANY plan that leaves insurance companies in control is a recipe for continued hemorraghing of the American public spending untold billions on waste, fraud, and criminal activity. Obama is an ENORMOUS failure in that he refuses to bargain on behalf of the people who elected him. By leaving the criminals in charge of health care he continues to allow fleecing and rip-off of the public.

Mark my words.