From: sooz@iastate.edu (Susan F Bradley)
Subject: Re: Business (was Re: Immigrants and employment)
Organization: Dept of English -- IOWA STATE UNIV
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 19:47:33 GMT

In <1992Aug19.145423.20232@eua.ericsson.se> euafri@eua.ericsson.se (Fredrik.Ostman) writes:

[previous posts by J.A. Fagertun and H. Vaisenen deleted]

>Yes. Society has a need to see that these people get themselves a job.
>Therefore, it shouldn't hinder, with taxes on finances and companies
>and their owners, comprehensive labour legislation, and compulsory 
>administrative tasks, an entrepreneur to start a new business taking 
>advantage of the cheap labor available.

Spoken like a true, libertarian capitalist. You probably wouldn't feel an ounce
of shame at the return of sweatshops, child labour, and abolition of labour
unions would you? Every man for himself, only the strong shall survive, and all
that other individualistic rot, eh? 

[more stuff deleted]

>>Ask old people if they consider Russia to be a better society to live
>>in now !

>What use would it be? Don't you think these 70 years have left any
>traces? Why don't you ask e.g. Vaclav Klaus if he wants to import
>some socialism from the West! I think it's outrageous to use the
>situation in Russia today as an argument for socialism. A whole
>people has been bereft all their hope, all their money, all their
>faith and social and economic abilities, and you say: "Look how
>horrible capitalism is!" It's cynic in the words worst sense.

Of course it would be useful. Whether people like you really want to admit it
or not - the Soviets *did* manage to give the average person there a better 
life than what they had before. There are a quite a few people here from what 
used to be the Soviet Union. None of those I've spoken to wants to completely 
abandon the old system - they realize that capitalism a la USA is just as bad
a system in a different way than their old system. They hope to be able to find
a balance between the two systems. 

[stuff deleted. Vaisenen's comments about 400,000 Finnish refugees and the
 reply from Fagertun lead up to Ortman's following comment:]

>No, no, no, no. This is irony. It's a drift with the people who claim
>society should "take care" of all the poor, poor people like unemployed
>and refugees. There is obviously a lot of hypocrisy involved, since
>millions and millions of people on earth are unemployed or potential
>refugees. Either you have a nationalist viewpoint, and then other
>countries solve their problems by kicking them out to other countries,
>or you have a global viewpoint, and then, how can you say no?

Why should anyone use the millions and millions of people starving in the 
world as an excuse not to *at least* try to do something to alleviate the 
suffering of those within their own borders? THAT is the hypocrisy, my friend.
"Gee, folks, since we can't take care of the whole world, we just won't take
care of anyone!" What a warm, caring attitude that is. But that's just it, 
isn't it? People like you, Mr. Ortman, don't care about what happens to anyone
else, so long as you've got what you want. In my country the gap between rich
and poor is widening every day. People who were middle class tax-paying 
citizens just a couple of years ago are living in homeless shelters and in 
the streets today. They never thought it could happen to them, but it did. It
can happen to anyone of us in this country far more easily than any of us want
to believe. We are constantly telling ourselves that we are the richest nation
on the face of the earth - yet we have the highest infant mortality rate of the
industrialised world because so many women can't afford prenatal care. Medical
care in this country is only for those who can pay for it, you see. Is this the
kind of society you want for Sweden? Before you decide, perhaps you should 
remind yourself that YOU could be one of the ones who doesn't make it. No, I
know you won't believe that - not you, Fredrik Ortman, you're too good, too
important, too intelligent to ever be unemployed and homeless, aren't you? Well
that's what some of the people living in shelters here used to think. I'm sick
and tired of living in a society which worships the individual at the expense
of all else. I'd be more than happy to pay twice the taxes I do now, if it 
would give us a system like the one you seem so eager to abandon.

>In Sweden we know that the system for insuring the unemployed
>we have doesn't work once it is put to use. After six months the money
>is spent, and unemployment is only rising. So much for that system.
>--
>  ______                     _~
> (_/_ _  _  _/) _  . /)     / ) , _/)     _
>__/ _/(_(/_(/__/(_/_/Z_    (_/_/)_/__/))_(I_/)_

The US government has a huge deficit. We got it building bombs. Better to
destroy the entire world than let our precious country fall to the hands of the
Godless commies, they told us. Meanwhile our cities were crumbling. Our babies
were dying. Our youth were snorting cocaine and shooting each other over pairs
of sport shoes. What kind of a society did we think we were defending? This 
seems to be what you want. Please come take it away. I don't know if I can
stand it much longer, myself.

Susan Bradley
sooz@iastate.edu