vilakins: Vila looking questioning (eh?)
Nico ([personal profile] vilakins) wrote2013-01-05 05:16 pm
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Memorial cars

While I'm here (and LJ is), this is something else I've been meaning to ask about.

A couple of months ago I was following a car with a man's full name on the rear window and something in a curving line above it which I couldn't read till I got closer. In a very fancy script it said, "In loving memory of". OK, that was weird, but then a couple of weeks ago I saw another car with a much more readable sans-serif "In memory of" followed by another name. Both names were fairly standard English ones FWIW.

Has anyone else seem this sort of thing and/or know anything about it? Is it a new thing or something old which has just surfaced here?

And now I'm off to a barbecue with some people from Greg's work. I hope some of the people I know relatively well are there.

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[identity profile] samantha-vimes.livejournal.com 2013-01-06 04:08 am (UTC)(link)
But what about the necessities of life? Is bread $8 a loaf, rent $4000, and an asthma inhaler $500 out of pocket?

[identity profile] vilakins.livejournal.com 2013-01-06 09:54 am (UTC)(link)
I can buy for as little (for us) as $15 when an item's on special and I often do, but I've also bought for as much as $120. Of course it's easier now I have full-time work.

[identity profile] samantha-vimes.livejournal.com 2013-01-06 09:59 am (UTC)(link)
I'm confused-- $15-120 for a loaf of bread?

[identity profile] vilakins.livejournal.com 2013-01-06 10:05 am (UTC)(link)
Sorry, somehow I missed this thread and thought we were still on clothes. Sorry!

Bread is around $3 - $5 depending on type; I buy decent sourdough wholemeal or rye; I'm sure the supermarket sliced stuff if a lot cheaper. Rent is around $200 a week for a room in a shared house (as I know from my ex-boarder) and I think about $500 for a house? I'm guessing that one.

Asthma inhalers are on prescription only and cost $5 per item (like most prescribed drugs; a few are expensive) till you've gone over a certain limit in the year, then all are free. We do have a good health system compared to the US, even if it's nowhere near as good as the UK's or Australia's.

[identity profile] samantha-vimes.livejournal.com 2013-01-06 11:03 am (UTC)(link)
OMG! We pay the same amount for bread. More than twice, closer to three times, for housing. And medicines are a fucking mafia shakedown operation-- $135 for the cheaper inhaler before I started buying Canadian, and that was *with* insurance paying part of it.

So if Americans paid so little for *necessities*, poor people could buy $40 shirts!

[identity profile] vilakins.livejournal.com 2013-01-06 06:35 pm (UTC)(link)
True! Of course tourists from here would notice things like clothes, petrol, cars.

I still don't know why our clothes and shoes are so expensive; the clothes are all made in China after all and some of the shoes are. Until I got a full-time job I lived in Crocs.

I also don't know why so many Americans are afraid of a national health service like the UK has, and we have to a lesser extent. The rich probably prefer survival of the richest--I often suspect that of our right-wing governing National party--but surely the majority should realise they'd benefit.

[identity profile] samantha-vimes.livejournal.com 2013-01-06 10:08 pm (UTC)(link)
The majority aren't really good at risk calculation, or maths in general, and they see the fact they will have to output money and like to think they will never really get sick. Plus, the current model-- mandating *private* insurance, actually mandates a profit-making private sector (because anything else is socialism), while single-payer actually can be run nonprofit.

Add to that, huge numbers of Americans are paranoid about government (some for religious reasons, did you know Obama is the Anticrhist?), so they assume bureaucrats would just let them die rather than send them for treatment. After all, "If Stephen Hawking lived under the British National Health System, he'd be dead by now."<--True quote from American wingnut who couldn't be bothered to know the location and nationality of his celebrity example.

In short, many Americans are completely ignorant and proud of it.

[identity profile] vilakins.livejournal.com 2013-01-07 08:15 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, man!

I have no other words.

[identity profile] samantha-vimes.livejournal.com 2013-01-07 08:52 am (UTC)(link)
As for why Americans aren't good at this: when a teacher tried to teach critical thinking to a group of eighth graders, she got in trouble. The parents were complaining because the children were asking questions in church and at home. Authoritarians want obedient children, not smart ones, and America is overrun with a religious and economic authoritarian view.

I get very angry.

[identity profile] vilakins.livejournal.com 2013-01-07 08:57 am (UTC)(link)
It's certainly a very conservative society; strange when once it was so go-ahead.
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