Minorities in medicine

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Well duh, of course there is class warfare, it's called capitalism. Make as much as you can and keep as much as you can.
She lost her job, I wonder why. Single mother with 2 little kids? Might have missed to much time. In the wilds of Colorado? Business closes and it's the only horse in a one horse town? Tough spot to be in with no family or friends to form a support group.
Now what's a landlord to do? If tenents don't pay the rent, how will he pay the mortgage? If Catwoman goes into hock to buy a rental property and the tenant doesn't pay, she's up a creek without a paddle.
Sad story,...real shame for her and the kids.
Is it my problem? No.

Who knows, Bruce? One could come up with a thousand equally plausible stories. I live in a funny sort of place. Its a small town in the mounains with a city near by. In my town the jobs vanish after labor day weekend. I agree, the landlord has bills of his own to pay - most of 'em aren't in to act as charities. It's a difference in philosophy. Let's just say hypothetically she did loose her job because of too much time out with the kids. I'd say that as a society, we'd be better off making low cost, decent day care more available. That means one more productive person in the work force and fewer unsupervised kids out on the streets getting into God only knows what trouble.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Well if she had a "summer" job, she knew it was coming.

I'd say that as a society, we'd be better off making low cost, decent day care more available. That means one more productive person in the work force and fewer unsupervised kids out on the streets getting into God only knows what trouble

Sound reasoning, but who's "We'd"? Organized on a local level, in the neighborhood, in the town, great. But another federal or even state program, no thanks.

Several guys I work with have wives that are at home taking care of related and unrelated kids on a daily basis. It's what the government calls "unlicensed daycare"; it's cheap and it's available. "Licensed" is a euphemism for expensive and unobtainable for those that need it most. Any time the government gets involved, the rules and regulations become a bureaucratic nightmare.

Don't bother bitching about the money they're wasting in Iraq or any of the myriad of domestic pork barrels. That's exactly why I don't want anymore government programs, no matter how well intentioned.

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Well if she had a "summer" job, she knew it was coming. Sound reasoning, but who's "We'd"? Organized on a local level, in the neighborhood, in the town, great. But another federal or even state program, no thanks.

Several guys I work with have wives that are at home taking care of related and unrelated kids on a daily basis. It's what the government calls "unlicensed daycare"; it's cheap and it's available. "Licensed" is a euphemism for expensive and unobtainable for those that need it most. Any time the government gets involved, the rules and regulations become a bureaucratic nightmare.

Don't bother bitching about the money they're wasting in Iraq or any of the myriad of domestic pork barrels. That's exactly why I don't want anymore government programs, no matter how well intentioned.

Well, again, who knows if she had a summer job and just couldn't find another in time or if she refused to sleep with the boss, or she DID sleep with the boss and his wife found out, etc., etc.?

I actually am skeptical of much of what "big" government does myself. So many of the rules and regulations are damned hard on the person who is trying to run their own business, never mind the fact that some of those regulations are just stupid and wrong. On the other hand, without some kind of regulation, many big corporations will just run rough shod over the workers.

Case in point: the big uranium mining outfits that operated in western Colorado from the '40's till sometime in the '70's or '80's. In the '40's and '50's there was no EPA, and no one from OSHA wandered out from DC or even Salt Lake or Denver to make sure safe working conditions were being maintained by the big mining conglomerates. The result: The water out there became contaminated. Not just the rivers, but the water table as well. There are parts of the Dolores River that to this very day are completely dead. Its spooky to go look at that river. No fish, no aquatic insects, not even any damn algae along the banks. The area is slowly getting cleaned up (sort of), but at a frightful cost. It would have been much cheaper to put the right environmental controls in place from the start and make sure they were enforced.

Then there are all the former uranium workers who are dying or have already died of uranium induced cancers. The folks out there are simple working stiffs and in the 40's and 50's they didn't understand about something called an LD50 or just how rich in uranium the ore from any given mine was or when they needed to use extra precautions, and the corporations weren't about to enlighten them to these things either. Guess who foots the bill for the whole mess? You and me because the original corporations have morphed and merged and disolved into off shore banks somewhere, so there's no one left to be held accountable.

Now, Bruce, you can say "it's nothing to me" if a man is dying or uranium induced cancer, but, personally, I can't do that. That miner was producing uranium that went for the national defense of this country and love nukes or hate 'em, we're all still Americans and this is our country and our government, so I can't turn my back on that miner.

Its not an easy question and there are no winners on either side except possibly for a few fat cat CEO's of international corporations that thumb their noses at the rules whenever possible.

[xoxoxoBruce]

The people that profited from that mining operation are responsible to take care of the miner, even if it's just providing legal counsel for him to collect workman's comp. Not to make him rich with a huge settlement, punitive damages, and outrageous legal expenses.

But I still don't believe a day care center should be required to provide little boys with little urinals. They can use a toilet like they do at home.

Well, the miner's are mostly dead or dying, and I didn't see any driving around in mercedes benzes. The companies morphed themselves out of existance like I said. Meanwhile the guberment is concerning itself with urinals for 4 year olds in home run day care centers. I think we can both agree there's something wrong with this picture.

[Undertoad]

Mari I know this will sound like heresy but I am convinced the entire world was different in 1940s and 1950s and that applying modern concepts of safety and employment issues and such to the previous day is not really informative.

For starts the poverty rate was about 30-40% and the country was trying to quickly transition to an industrial economy where there would be far less scarcity.

The life expectancy was different. People died a lot. They smoked a lot -- because they died so much of other things that it wasn't obvious that cigarettes were bad for you.

It was a shock to me to take the Hoover dam tour and learn about the handful of guys who died building it. It wasn't that OSHA didn't exist. It was that it couldn't be done any other way at the time. Safety is a cost that we build into things routinely now, but we simply couldn't afford to do it at the time.

[Katkeeper]

Things were different in the '40s and '50s. I was there...

[glatt]

Hell, things were even different in the 70s when I was a kid. Our playgrounds were paved, even under the equipment. Kids wearing casts were a common sight. Now playgrounds have a foot of mulch under the swings, etc. I can't remember the last time I saw some kid with a leg or arm in a cast.

Everything has a warning label now, to the point that people routinely ignore them. When something is truely dangerous, ignorant people don't know because they assume the warning label has no meaning. For example, my father teaches electronics labs in college. Today's students see "Warning high voltage" on circuits they are working in, and they take it as seriously as a warning label on a cup of coffee. My dad's really nervous that some student will kill themselves when a big fat capacitor discharges through their hearts and it stops beating. He tells them "this is really dangerous" and they hear the "blah blah blah" of Charlie Brown's parents on TV.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Mari I know this will sound like heresy but I am convinced the entire world was different in 1940s and 1950s and that applying modern concepts of safety and employment issues and such to the previous day is not really informative.

For starts the poverty rate was about 30-40% and the country was trying to quickly transition to an industrial economy where there would be far less scarcity.

The life expectancy was different. People died a lot. They smoked a lot -- because they died so much of other things that it wasn't obvious that cigarettes were bad for you.

It was a shock to me to take the Hoover dam tour and learn about the handful of guys who died building it. It wasn't that OSHA didn't exist. It was that it couldn't be done any other way at the time. Safety is a cost that we build into things routinely now, but we simply couldn't afford to do it at the time.

In the '50's the poverty rate was around 16%:

http://www.census.gov/income/histpov/hstpov2.lst

I couldn't find statistics for the '40's doing my quick and dirty search techniques. I believe you are probably thinking about the depression era of the 30's, not the war years of the '40's or the post war boom in the US which started after WWII. I am talking about cancer related deaths from the '60's to present due to uranium exposure, not historical differences in longevity (which by the way haven't changed all that much - our current life expectancy is due mostly to changes in the infant mortality rate where children no longer die of epedemics caused by bacterial organisms).

My point is that there does need to be SOME government oversight of mega-business concerns. The little guy has his hands tied while the multi-national conglomerates do as they please.

[Cyber Wolf]

Originally Posted by marichiko

My point is that there does need to be SOME government oversight of mega-business concerns. The little guy has his hands tied while the multi-national conglomerates do as they please.

This is the case sometimes, if only to save the idiots from themselves. Some will take notice while others will take on the classic Teenage Mentality "You aren't the boss of me! It's a free country, I can do what I want!" then promptly get themselves into trouble or worse.

But in terms of the littly guy vs the conglomos, it's all about money. The littley guy very...VERY rarely has the fincancial backing to stand toe to toe with a large company. Even if lots of little guys get together, the large company will more often than not still have the financial standing to keep those little guys from getting too rowdy. If the government gets involved, you can be sure that its attention will tip and sway with the passing of cash, be it for 'fines' or 'pay-outs' or 'special interests'. They have contingencies for the uncommon occasion a situation finds itself in the Court of Public Opinion too. Big companies have whole teams of people whose job it is to take blame and reallocate it, making the company seem more like a victim and largely at the whim of other factors. Shouldn't oughta be that way, but it is.

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by marichiko

In the '50's the poverty rate was around 16%:

http://www.census.gov/income/histpov/hstpov2.lst

This source only goes back to 1959 where the rate was 22.4%. here are some of the stats you want. Scroll down the page and look for row "H". We start at 40-45% in 1937 at the tail of the depression, and poverty pretty much slowly drops until its low at 11.1% in 1973.

The source you give appears to be someone with some sort of political agenda. I try to refer to Bureau of census statistics whenever possible because, in theory at least, such information should be somewhat less biased. The figure I got was further down on the page. It all depends on what factors you use in the definition of poverty. A government researcher states:

"The force of this American historical evidence is strengthened when one realizes that the income elasticity of the poverty line results from social processes that have continued--indeed, have perhaps even intensified--since the 1960's. These social processes can be summarized as follows: As technology progresses and the general standard of living rises, new consumption items are introduced. They may at first be purchased and used only by upper-income families; however, they gradually diffuse to middle- and lower-income levels. Things originally viewed as luxuries--for instance, indoor plumbing, telephones, and automobiles--come to be seen as conveniences and then as necessities. In addition, changes in the ways in which society is organized (sometimes in response to new "necessities") may make it more expensive for the poor to accomplish a given goal--as when widespread car ownership and increasing suburbanization lead to a deterioration in public transportation, and the poor are forced to buy cars or hire taxis in order to get to places where public transit used to take them. Finally, the general upgrading of social standards can make things more expensive for the poor--as when housing code requirements that all houses have indoor plumbing added to the cost of housing."

http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/papers/relabs.htm

It should be noted that your source places a question mark after his estimate of 40-47% for 1937. I was talking about the 40's and 50's, and poverty levels are beside the point to what I was stating. I don't care if the whole god damn country was living below the poverty level, it was still unconscionable for uranium mining outfits to knowingly expose their workers to high levels of radiation without informing them of the risks involved and then for these companies to vanish off the corporate map by some financial slight of hand, and thus escape all accountability.