"I think the state is there to serve the people. To make life as comfortable to them as possible."

I read the rest of your post, but I have nothing to comment on that.  However, why do you think that way in the phrase I just quoted from you?  My view on state is that it exists only because of its original purpose: to protect its inhabitants.  So, I would like to know why you feel the state must cater to the people?

Here in America if you dont want an employer you can have that as a career goal, set out on your own or as a real extreme homestead on federal land. There's still trappers and prospectors out there in the woods... Though Alaska state residents all get $ from the state oil industry.

State paid is not the same as you paying for it. In the us Medicare system something like 10% of the program budget is payments to citizens. It costs $9 to give a citizen $1. However you figure your personal time it doesnt cost that much for you to pay cash.

America is getting too soft and greedy.  My parents generation would have been--and were--angry to be told that they should ask for govt charity. Now the anger is against those who remind people that the Earned Income Tax credit is charity and SCHIP is charity and any money from the govt beyond what you earned is charity and shameful.

Faced with the truth liberals and "progressives" fall back on cynicism and fatalism. Like the line Spielberg put in Golda Meir's mouth in "munich":  "all civilizations come to a point where they violate their own principles"--sure right before they collapse in their own decadence. Great civilizations solve problems and are proud of it. Liberals are like a guy who stands on the railroad tracks and lets the train hit them because "they're tired of running"

That is why your bank can shout itself blue in the face about our letting the dollar crumble and inflation triples food and fuel prices and nothing will be done to save the dollar. Our govt owes every man woman and child in the usa a home and utilities and health care, braces, cable tv, a car, food, clothing, a college education and a job with automatic pay raises and promotions and the ability to switch up employers. Whatever that costs is too bad, it must be spent. There is no longer any organized poltical opposition to this view in the USA. For now. But i think it just as likely as a Conservative revival, that a public loyal to a standard of living, would repudiate the constitution that failed to provide bread and circuses

I hate all Americans because a small number of the are too stupid to tell the difference between the words Your and You're, as well as Their and There.

i get PAID to type gud

Oh, what the hell.

I hate all Americans as well. 
Because they speak funny, no matter where I go.

I live in the UK, I have private health cover, as well as the standard NHS cover. I got private because I kept getting injuries that:
a) The NHS were taking ages to do anything about - they do have several million people to cater for.
b) The NHS weren't doing enough about - I want fast and effective treatment, not a subscription for anti-inflammatories, and to be told to give up my sports. Hell, if I give up my sports, I'll have nothing much left, and there's no point having the best-kept tendons in the cemetary, is there?

If I get a common illness, or want vaccinations, then I go to the NHS and take my time. If I want fast and top-notch service, then I pay for it myself. The NHS are there to provide a minimum satisfactory level of healthcare, and they do that very well, despite what our (shite) press say abou them.

nice signature fokker

ya the Socialist Republic of New York

@ Psycho....perfect example of the waste and beauracracy of a failed Socialist Health Care service.
Let me keep the tax burden of providing the most basic of services, that you do well, and apply it to the private sector where a much better and efficient health care can provide most likely a cheaper more efficient basic service as well.

Leave the NHS service to provide for the most needy/lazy/poor/not so demanding to serve.

Good example.