american healthcare

tom hunter (3,216) Says: 
June 29th, 2012 at 2:34 pm

Based on Measures of Quality, Efficiency, Access, Equity, and Healthy Lives

Lies, damned lies and statistics …..

I’ll look at the link at some point but I suppose it will be the usual stuff focusing on life expectancy and infant mortality. But the latter numbers are unreliable for international comparisons and the former appear to be affected more by basic things such as demographics, clean water and sewerage systems, and diet. Similarly infant mortality rates are five times the national average on Indian reservations (which have publicly financed health care through the Indian Health Service) and quite low in places like Utah and Washington.

When it comes to things that can actually be linked directly to health care it’s quite a different story – like cancer:

American women have a 63 percent chance of living at least five years after a cancer diagnosis, compared with 56 percent of women in Europe. For American men, the numbers are even more dramatic. Sixty-six percent of American men live five years past a diagnosis of cancer, but only 47 percent of European men do.

Of cancers that affect only women, the survival rate for uterine cancer is 5 percentage points higher in the U.S. than the European average, and 14 percent higher for breast cancer. Among cancers that affect only or primarily men, survival rates for prostate cancer are 28 percent higher in the U.S., and for bladder cancer, 15 percent higher.

 tom hunter (3,216) Says: 
June 29th, 2012 at 5:19 pm

It should be fun to watch!

Children up to the age of 26 were already covered under the SCHIP legislation, as poor people were covered by Medicaid for the last four decades.

It’s a rather sad commentary on the left that two apparently failed Government healthcare programs are going to be fixed by creating and even larger, more extensive government health care program over the top of them.

As far Romney is concerned he may not even have any arguments to deal with since most of the Democrats have been reluctant to mention it on the stump. Given that the mandate has now been converted into the largest tax increase on the middle class in decades that should make the stump debates even more fun than you imagine.

 Sonny Blount (1,525) Says: 
June 29th, 2012 at 5:25 pm

It is absurd to expect the ‘cost’ of healthcare to be directly comparable between the US and other counries. Here are some reasons:

Different countries are treating different populations of people, the US has 3 times the obesity rate of Sweden, and therefore 3 times the obesity related costs.

Different services are being performed, the US has the most plastic surgeons in the world by a huge margin, their be 100 times the number in US as in a country like Sweden. So many of the costs in the US system are voluntary and standards are different, British teeth are not acceptable over there.

Healthcare is one of the top places to spend disposable healthcare. Because the US are wealthier, people are able to spend a higher part of their incomes on healthcare and they do. If you can get a room to yourself and better meals while in hospital, people want this and will pay.

The US is one of the hotbeds of medical innovation. Because there is a market for $100 a pop pills that may save your life, there is an incentive to innovate and eventually we are able to get those same pills 5 to 10 years later for $10. People pay for these latest and greatest medicines because they would rather be alive and bankrupt than dead with money in the bank.

The US model is not the free market model. It should be a lot better than it is, but socialism is not the right response to their problems.

And then there are other things:

The largest international study to date found that the five-year survival rate for all types of cancer among both men and women was higher in the U.S. than in Europe. There is a steeper increase in blood pressure with advancing age in Europe. A 60% higher prevalence of hypertension. The aggressive treatment offered to U.S. cardiac patients apparently improves survival and functioning relative to that of Canadian patients. Fewer health- and disability-related problems occur among U.S. spinal-cord-injury patients than among Canadian and British patients.

Britain has only one-fourth as many CT scanners per capita as the U.S., and one-third as many MRI scanners. The rate at which the British provide coronary-bypass surgery or angioplasty to heart patients is only one-fourth the U.S. rate, and hip replacements are only two-thirds the U.S. rate. The rate for treating kidney failure (dialysis or transplant) is five times higher in the U.S. for patients between the ages of 45 and 84, and nine times higher for patients 85 years or older.

Overall, nearly 1.8 million Britons are waiting for hospital or outpatient treatments at any given time. In 2002–2004, dialysis patients waited an average of 16 days for permanent blood-vessel access in the U.S., 20 days in Europe, and 62 days in Canada. In 2000, Norwegian patients waited an average of 133 days for hip replacement, 63 days for cataract surgery, 160 days for a knee replacement, and 46 days for bypass surgery after being approved for treatment. Short waits for cataract surgery produce better outcomes, prompt coronary-artery bypass reduces mortality, and rapid hip replacement reduces disability and death. Studies show that only 5 percent of Americans wait more than four months for surgery, compared with 23 percent of Australians, 26 percent of New Zealanders, 27 percent of Canadians, and 36 percent of Britons.

There are also weird outcomes, such as the logical conclusion that under a system where one pays, one would skimp on preventative care. However …

… the proportion of middle-aged Canadian women who have never had a mammogram is twice that of the U.S., and three times as many Canadian women have never had a Pap smear. Fewer than a fifth of Canadian men have ever been tested for prostate-specific antigen, compared with about half of American men. Only one in ten adult Canadians has had a colonoscopy, compared with about a third of adult Americans.

These differences in screening may partly explain why the mortality rate in Canada is 25 percent higher for breast cancer, 18 percent higher for prostate cancer, and 13 percent higher for colorectal cancer. In addition, while half of all diabetics have high blood pressure, it is controlled in 36 percent of U.S. cases, compared with only 9 percent of cases in Canada.

I would not get too cocky about the cost aspect either as it’s another apples to oranges comparison between our 80:20 public/private system and their 50:50 system. Our costs are low because, among other things, we suppress the incomes of doctors and nurses – which also means we lose them to places like the USA. That sort of rationing also explains things like the grossly lower numbers of scanners, treatments, surgeries, etc. So yes the cost is lower, but we pay the price in other ways, most of which are probably not measured.

transmission gulley

libertyscott (305) Says: 
June 22nd, 2012 at 9:34 pm

What happened to wanting road projects to have positive BCRs David?

Transmission Gully doesn’t even reach 1, or is only when the other lot are in power that it’s time to damn wasted money? You can’t argue against the ridiculous rail schemes of the Greens when you support these bloated road schemes.

It remains roughly 30% more expensive to do this compared to upgrading the existing route, which only needs a bypass at Pukerua Bay and some widening from there to Mackays to be more than adequate. The only argument in favour of it was that it wouldn’t mean buying off a few NIMBYs at Paekakariki, confronting defenders of the rocky foreshore along the coast. Yet it will cost easily $250-300 million more – or rather, the cost of doing the Basin Reserve-Mt Victoria Tunnel-Ruahine St-Wellington Rd upgrade, but who cares? It’s POLITICS and POLITICIANS always know best how to allocate resources and win votes by conceding to lobbyists whose main interest is increasing the value of their properties in Kapiti and along Mana Esplanade.

I remember when Maurice Williamson and the last real National government actually proudly stated that it didn’t interfere in the decisions of Transfund when it chose how best to allocate revenue from motoring taxes based on economic efficiency.

The congestion arguments at Mana largely evaporated when it was widened for $15 million, the Pukerua Bay bottleneck would take around $90 million to fix and Paekakariki’s nasty little intersection would take a bit over $100 million to trench and grade separate. Then it’s about $300 million to widen the coastal stretch (which hasn’t been killing people since a few million was spent on a median barrier). In the long run a big bypass of Plimmerton and Mana can be considered, but it’s far from necessary now.

It’s notable that Labour took BCR calculations out of the National Land Transport Programme and the Nats have decided that’s really convenient. So there is no longer a principled basis to resist the Greens’ whacky ideas about rail based on wasting money – when you waste money on grandiose excessive road projects that could never be funded from tolls or the fuel tax/RUC paid on a per km basis by the expected users.

Oh and while Wellington City continues to engage in its absurd smartgrowth anti-sprawl planning framework, this will open up Kapiti and beyond for an even faster growing commuter belt.

War right? winner take all?

http://chronicle.com/article/The-European-Atrocity-Yo/132123#comment-560386559

• Having grown up with this story, I am fully aware both of the horrors of that period, and also the lack of attention it has received in histories of, and discussions about, the end of World War II.  But I have two critical clarifications to make:  language does not equal ethnicity, and ethnicity is rarely homogeneous, particularly in a heterogeneous country such as the former Czechoslovakia.  In some points of the article, Mr. Douglas refers to the deportees as "German-speaking" but then conflates that with being ethnically German or just German.  German-speaking is also conflated with being sympathetic to the political cause of the state of Germany during the war, and, by association, the Holocaust.  Neither characterization is true. 

  Taking my own family as an example, while primarily German-speaking (family members spoke both German and Czech) genealogy traced back to the 15th century shows both Slavic and Germanic heritage, along with a variety of other ethnicities.  The labelling of any group of individuals, as one singular ethnicity based on their language, hair color, or any other aspect is a slippery slope, as DNA testing is increasingly showing. 

  Politics loves simplicity, so by characterizing a group of individuals based on their language, it is easy to set one group against a recognizable "other."  But historical analysis, in striving to clarify the the wrongs of policy and in an attempt to prevent it from happening again, should strive for clarity.  Deportations and executions during the periods of mass expulsion were cloaked in "German-ness" but were really an excuse for the political forces in power to rid themselves of those they felt we undesirable in one way or another.  Many citizens, with only a tenuous link to "German-ness" or really no link at all, were either executed or expelled in those post-war years when combat had ceased and peace supposedly reigned.

  I thank Mr. Douglass for presenting the horrors of the expulsions, horrors that attend all forced migrations, and should never be condoned in a modern world.  But I would ask for clarity in describing the excuses for the expulsions - for that is what they were.  Excuses.  That is the only possibility we have for ensuring that the same excuses will not be used again, in another place, by the "righteous" victors of war.

  
  

  117 people liked this. 

• Art Agel 1 day ago in reply to ebrabec

  "Was the punishment against the Germans justified?"

  Another phony question but I'll bite.

  *It is Absolutely Justified*. 

  Millions of people fought and sacrificed to win struggles which
  ultimately came to be known as World War 2.  If these people, who worked
  so hard to win the war are not in a position to pass judgment on the
  Germans, then who is Douglass to pass judgment from atop an ivory tower
  decades afterwards? - Professor Douglass who sacrificed nothing, knows
  nothing, suffered nothing, risked nothing.

  As we say in the military "You were not there".  You risked nothing.
  You won nothing.  And so you are not in the position to affect the
  outcome.  You're judgment means nothing
  

Nations Culture; Who owns who?

http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/thoughts-on-the-rhine/?singlepage=true

In other words, it is as illogical as it is common for the wayward debtor to blame the thrifty creditor for his dilemma. The Germans now are in the impossible situation of being told they did something wrong by doing things mostly right. They retire too late and caused others to retire too early; they saved too much money so others had to borrow too much; they built too many things that others wanted; they acted too much like parents and so made others too much like children.......

 Culture is everything. That is a politically incorrect thought that can get you in trouble as much as we suspect it is true.In other words, government, economics, and social policy are critical, but themselves are driven by the minute-to-minute culture of everyday people. Germans pick up trash; in Athens, Greeks toss it. Germans do not honk; Italians do not not honk. In Libya or Egypt the pedestrian is a target; in Switzerland he is considered perhaps your father or grandmother. A bathroom in Germany is where someone else uses it after you; in Greece or Mexico, it is where you pass on the distaste of using the facility to the sucker who follows you.

Krugman Keynesian Economics

grich

1. Krugman's Nobel was for work he did on factor productivity in developing economies, not for Keynesian economics.

2. Economics has no balance sheet. It is the balance sheet that shows there are consequences to government spending: the buildup of debt. There is no line in the Keynesian model for this.

3. Keynesian economics does not look at any of the structural conditions of the economy. For instance, if there is a huge imbalance in the economy due to overinvestment in housing, there is no line in the Keynesian model for this.

4. The reason a private enterprise economy works is that there is accounting that shows whether an investment returns more than its cost. This is value creation. If an investment returns less than its cost, it destroys value. This was one of the problems of the Soviet economy.

5. There is no way to measure the return on Keynesian spending because the whole point of the Keynesian model is spending per se, rather than spending as a result of demand - demand defined as customers receiving more value from a transaction than they pay for it. Since there is no way to measure the effectiveness of Keynesian spending in the Keynesian model, you might as well give the money to your cronies, something Obama is all too good at. In Keynesian terms, the money spent on Solyndra is a win!

6. We have run a deficit of 10% of GDP for 4 years. This is way above any previous peacetime deficit, including the New Deal. How much MORE spending does a Keynesian like Krugman want?

7. The worst depression prior to the Great Depression was the post-WWI 1920 - 1921 Depression. The Harding Administration shrank government spending and signed the Fordney - McCumber Tariff. The result? The Roaring 20's. How does the Keynesian model deal with that?

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Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/05/the_illogic_of_paul_krugman_comments.html#disqus_thread#ixzz1w9mbdaiH

Taxes

http://www.american.com/archive/2007/november-december-magazine-contents/guess-who-really-pays-the-taxes

early NZ

The newest country in the world” by Paul Moon…not as good as “This horrid practice”, but very informative… You might also find “Native Strangers” by Susanne Williams Milcairns (about the beachcomber/castaway period in NZ) very interesting…


http://www.thebriefingroom.com/archives/nz_political/treaty_of_waitangi/index.html

Immigration Costs

http://www.newswithviews.com/Wooldridge/frosty767.htm

WHAT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION COSTS YOU THE TAXPAYER

By Frosty Wooldridge
May 14, 2012
NewsWithViews.com

Each year, according to the Edwin Rubenstein report, illegal aliens cost American taxpayers $346 billion across 15 federal agencies. (Source:www.TheSocialContract.com) That includes breakfasts and lunches for their children. It includes English as a Second Language. It includes free education from K-12. It means free and unlimited medical care paid for by your wallet. It means you pay for insurance rates by unlicensed drivers and the list grows.

According to the Arizona Department of Motor Vehicles, an average of 57,000 cars are stolen annually. It is now the car-jacking capital of the world. Most are SUV’s and pickup trucks. At a conservative average of $20,000.00 per vehicle, owner losses exceeded $1.1 billion. Insurance companies in the state suffered incredible claims from policyholders.

Where did those vehicles go? Who stole them? Take a guess. Arizona is the home of 1,000,000 illegal aliens. Hopefully the Supreme Court supported S.B. 1070 to rid the state of alien migrants. They cost Arizona taxpayers over $1 billion annually in services for schools, medical care, welfare anchor babies, loss of tax base and prisons. Illegals use those vehicles for smuggling more people and drugs from around the world into our country. When the vehicles are recovered, they are smashed-up wrecks in the desert. If not found, they have new owners south of the border as thieves drive the cars through the desert and into Mexico as easily as you drive your kids to soccer practice.

The chilling costs of illegal migration reach like an octopus into every aspect of our lives. Illegal aliens displaced American workers at a cost in excess of $133 billion dollars according to Harvard Professor George Borjas. College and high school kids cannot find a summer job in yard care, landscape, fast food or service jobs. Why? Illegal aliens work them at a third the wage and often, under the table. Not only do your kids not have jobs; you’re paying taxes for illegal aliens who are not paying taxes.

Joining the Dots of Evil

We Will Not Be Silent

Nick McAvelly of The Frozen North sends the following essay about the growing jihad against soft targets in the West, the ineffectiveness of official efforts to combat it, and the inability of the “moderate” Muslim community to prevent it.


We Will Not Be Silent
by Nick McAvelly

The murders committed by Mohamed Merah in Toulouse have been forgotten by the mainstream media. The shootings were covered at the time, as was Merah’s subsequent suicide by cop. Acts of Islamic terrorism do appear in the press if a mujahideen is successful and someone dies. If it bleeds, it leads.

But there’s more to the Toulouse shootings than a young man from a run-downbanlieue who ‘self-radicalised’ then went on a killing spree. The Toulouse shootings are one more instance of Islamic terrorist attacks being carried out around the world against so-called ‘soft targets’.

Once it became known that the murders had been carried out by a mujahid, the French authorities acted, and detained several men connected to the banned Islamic group Forsane Alizza. One of those men was Willie Brigitte, who is well known in both France and Australia.^[1,2]

Willie Brigitte had travelled to Australia in May 2003, having previously attended a training camp in Pakistan run by Lashkar-e-Taiba, a terrorist organisation listed in Australia’s Criminal Code Regulations. Once Brigitte arrived in Australia, he established contact with Faheem Khalid Lodhi, another individual whose name is known in Australia.^[3,4]

In October 2003, Lodhi’s home and workplace were raided by the Australian police and ASIO (the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) and evidence was obtained which incriminated Lodhi in a terrorist plot: Four military training manuals on explosives and weapons, a document written in Urdu containing recipes for poisons and explosives, and several poems glorifying martyrdom.^[4,5] One disc found in Lodhi’s possession was described as ‘a virtual library encouraging the reader to undertake violent jihad’.^[4]

Lodhi also had in his possession photographs of Holsworthy Army Base, Victoria Barracks, HMAS Penguin at Mosman (home to Balmoral Naval Hospital)^[6] and a map of the national electricity grid. Other documents indicated that Lodhi had attempted to source chemicals required to prepare explosives.^[7] Lodhi was arrested and in June 2006 was found guilty of three separate terrorist offences.^[4,7]

The contact between Lodhi and Willie Brigitte had been arranged by an individual known as ‘Sajid’, who had met Lodhi met at a mosque in Pakistan in 2002 and again in 2003.^[4] Willie Brigitte met ‘Sajid’ at the Lashkar-e-Taiba training camp.^[5]Australian authorities were satisfied by the evidence they uncovered that ‘Sajid’ had arranged for Lodhi and Brigitte to meet in Sydney so they could explore the possibility of committing acts of terrorism in Australia.^[4]

Willie Brigitte was arrested and extradited to France, where he was found guilty of ‘criminal association linked to a terrorist enterprise’. Brigitte received a sentence of nine years, but since the time he had spent in pre-trial detention was taken into account when calculating the length of his sentence, he was released in 2009.^[1,2]

Three years down the line, and Willie Brigitte has been detained again, along with other members of Forsane Alizza, a group described by Bernard Squarcini, the head of the DCRI counterespionage agency in France, as ‘a veritable danger’.^[1,2,8]

Like many people nowadays, Mohamed Merah used social networking sites. He signed off from his internet life as ‘Mohamed Merah — Forsane Alizza’.^[9]

Before he committed the acts of jihad that brought him infamy in Europe and Israel, Mohamed Merah travelled to several Islamic countries in the Middle East. Merah is reported to have trained with the Taliban and to have fought against NATO troops.^[9,10,11,12]

Abdelkader Merah, Mohamed’s brother, is reported to have helped smuggle jihadis into Iraq in 2007^[10] and to have been involved with the terrorist group Jund-al-Kilafah.^[13] Abdelkader Merah has been formally charged with ‘complicity in murder’ by the French authorities, in connection with Mohamed’s crimes.^[14]

Nicolas Sarkozy said following these acts of Islamic terrorism that it is the state’s duty to guarantee the security of the French people. As he put it, ‘We have no choice. It’s absolutely indispensable.’^[15,16] Sarkozy has also said that ‘The values of France have been attacked.’ And as French President, Sarkozy said: ‘We must be implacable in defending our values.’^[9]

This is not the first time that Western values have been violated by French Muslims in the most brutal manner.

In January 2006, a young man named Ilan Halimi arranged a date with a woman he’d met in the shop where he worked. She was a member of ‘The Barbarians’, a gang who lay in wait for Halimi that night and kidnapped him. Over the next three weeks, Halimi was held in a basement and tortured to death. Verses from the Koran were read as ransom demands were made on the internet. Beaten, stabbed and burned over four-fifths of his body, Halimi was eventually found handcuffed and abandoned in a field. He died on the way to hospital.

When Ilan Halimi was murdered, the Simon Wiesenthal Center sent a message to Nicolas Sarkozy, who was at that time the interior minister, saying, ‘These acts are a test for Europe. Jihadi violence, hatred and anti-Semitism must be prevented from taking root in French soil.’ Sarkozy replied that anti-Semitic violence is ‘not inevitable’ in France, and he considered combating it to be ‘a moral imperative.’^[17]

The measures taken by the French authorities are appropriate and necessary. The men connected to the banned group Forsane Alizza who were arrested^[15,16] were found to be in possession of ‘an impressive lot’ of firearms, including Kalashnikov rifles.^[1,8] Thirteen of them ended up facing charges of criminal association linked to a terrorist network and of obtaining and transporting firearms.^[18,19,20]

According to French interior minister Claude Gueant, there are other groups in France whose members have the ‘desire’ and ‘enthusiasm’ to avenge the death of Mohamed Merah. Gueant has advised the French public to be ‘vigilant and attentive.’^[21]

The French authorities have not arrested every Muslim living in France, because clearly not everyone living in France who would call themselves a Muslim poses an immediate threat to the lives of French citizens, the security of the country, or the values of French society. However, the logical observation must be made that all of the recent suspects who were deemed by the French authorities to pose a threat to France are, as a matter of fact, Muslims.

Willie Brigitte only started down the path to Islamic terrorism after he converted to Islam in 1998. He attended a mosque in Paris, and has reportedly said that the hadith relating to jihad played a large part in what was taught in that mosque.^[22]

Mohamed Merah reportedly told the French officers tasked with taking him down that he had decided to take up arms against the West and ultimately to commit acts of terrorism against French citizens after he read the Koran in prison.^{[23, 24, 25]}

The fact that Mohamed Merah read the Koran in jail was presented by the French authorities as evidence that Merah was not part of a group of Islamic terrorists, but that doesn’t follow. Mohamed Merah was in prison from 2007 until 2009.^[10]Merah’s reading the Koran three years ago says nothing whatsoever about what he got up to afterwards.

The only conclusion that can be reached from Mohamed Merah’s testimony prior to his suicide by cop is that the inspiration for his terrorism came from the pages of the foundational text of Islam, the Koran.

Of course, human beings don’t need to look between the covers of the Koran to find reasons to kill one another. If anyone doubts that, a visit to the Imperial War Museum in London will open their eyes.

The legacy of World War II is still with us, and that legacy needs to be understood properly. Unfortunately, as the journalist Caroline Glick has argued in her book Shackled Warrior, much of Europe’s current moral sickness stems from a flawed perception of World War II.^[26]

Militarism and nationalism are today condemned, without argument. The well of discourse is poisoned by labelling any dissenting voices as ‘right-wing’. Pacifism, appeasement and globalism are preached endlessly.

But the lesson to be taken from World War II is not that we must pursue a policy of pacifism and appeasement, no matter how much that might cost us. Nor is it that we must hand over control of our nation states to transnational entities run by anonymous oligarchies.

The cause of the war was not nationalism per se. After all, there were nation states who stood against the Nazis. It was Germany’s embrace of evil, and the inability of the leaders of other countries to identify that evil and to stand against it.

As Winston Churchill said repeatedly in his record of World War II, the refusal of British politicians to face unpleasant facts and to deal with the evil forces arising in Hitler’s empire led to a world of horror and misery that was almost beyond conception.^[27]

In his authoritative history of World War II, Martin Gilbert writes of a Nazi soldier who, while transporting Jewish families from one area in Poland to another, threw a three year old child into the snow to die. When the mother tried to save her child, the soldier threatened to shoot her with a revolver. The mother said she would rather die than leave her child alone. The soldier then offered to kill everyone else in her wagon instead, and leave her alive. The mother arrived in Warsaw without her child, whereupon the woman lost her sanity. As Gilbert says, this incident, and many others like it, does not indicate that German militarism had prevailed over Poland, but that evil had triumphed over Germany.^[28]

ows manifesto

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/11/occupy-globalmay-manifesto

Why does the system stuff up below

The statement below does not speak on behalf of everyone in the global spring/Occupy/Take the Square movements. It is an attempt by some inside the movements to reconcile statements written and endorsed in the different assemblies around the world. The process of writing the statement was consensus-based, open to all, and regularly announced on our international communications platforms. It was a hard and long process, full of compromises; this statement is offered to people's assemblies around the world for discussions, revisions and endorsements. It is a work in progress.

We do not make demands from governments, corporations or parliament members, which some of us see as illegitimate, unaccountable or corrupt. We speak to the people of the world, both inside and outside our movements.

We want another world, and such a world is possible:

1. The economy must be put to the service of people's welfare, and to support and serve the environment, not private profit. We want a system where labour is appreciated by its social utility, not its financial or commercial profit. Therefore, we demand:

• Free and universal access to health, education from primary school through higher education and housing for all human beings. We reject outright the privatisation of public services management, and the use of these essential services for private profit.

• Full respect for children's rights, including free childcare for everyone.

• Retirement/pension so we may have dignity at all ages. Mandatory universal sick leave and holiday pay.

• Every human being should have access to an adequate income for their livelihood, so we ask for work or, alternatively, universal basic income guarantee.

• Corporations should be held accountable to their actions. For example, corporate subsidies and tax cuts should be done away with if said company outsources jobs to decrease salaries, violates the environment or the rights of workers.

• Apart from bread, we want roses. Everyone has the right to enjoy culture, participate in a creative and enriching leisure at the service of the progress of humankind. Therefore, we demand the progressive reduction of working hours, without reducing income.

• Food sovereignty through sustainable farming should be promoted as an instrument of food security for the benefit of all. This should include an indefinite moratorium on the production and marketing of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and immediate reduction of agrochemicals use.

• We demand policies that function under the understanding that our changing patterns of life should be organic/ecologic or should never be. These policies should be based on a simple rule: one should not spoil the balance of ecosystems for simple profit. Violations of this policy should be prosecuted around the world as an environmental crime, with severe sanctions for those convicted.

• Policies to promote the change from fossil fuels to renewable energy, through massive investment which should help to change the production model.

• We demand the creation of international environmental standards, mandatory for countries, companies, corporations, and individuals. Ecocide (wilful damage to the environment, ecosystems, biodiversity) should be internationally recognised as a crime of the greatest magnitude.

2. To achieve these objectives, we believe that the economy should be run democratically at all levels, from local to global. People must get democratic control over financial institutions, transnational corporations and their lobbies. To this end, we demand:

• Control and regulation of financial speculation by abolishing tax havens, and establishing a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT). As long as they exist, the IMF, World Bank and the Basel Committee on Banking Regulation must be radically democratised. Their duty from now on should be fostering economic development based on democratic decision making. Rich governments cannot have more votes because they are rich. International institutions must be controlled by the principle that each human is equal to all other humans – African, Argentinian or American; Greek or German.

• As long as they exist, radical reform and democratisation of the global trading system and the World Trade Organization must take place. Commercialisation of life and resources, as well as wage and trade dumping between countries must stop.

• We want democratic control of the global commons, defined as the natural resources and economic institutions essential for a proper economic management. These commons are: water, energy, air, telecommunications and a fair and stable economic system. In all these cases, decisions must be accountable to citizens and ensure their interests, not the interests of a small minority of financial elite.

• As long as social inequalities exist, taxation at all levels should maintain the principle of solidarity. Those who have more should contribute to maintain services for the collective welfare. Maximum income should be limited, and minimum income set to reduce the outrageous social divisions in our societies and its social political and economic effects.

• No more money to rescue banks. As long as debt exists, following the examples of Ecuador and Iceland, we demand a social audit of the debts owed by countries. Illegitimate debt owed to financial institutions should not be paid.

• An absolute end to fiscal austerity policies that only benefit a minority, and cause great suffering to the majority.

• As long as banks exist, separation of commercial and financial banks, avoiding banks that are "too big to fail".

• An end to the legal personhood of corporations. Companies cannot be elevated to the same level of rights as people. The public's right to protect workers, citizens and the environment should prevail over the protections of private property or investment.

3. We believe that political systems must be fully democratic. We therefore demand full democratisation of international institutions, and the elimination of the veto power of a few governments. We want a political system which really represent the variety and diversity of our societies:

• All decisions affecting all mankind should be taken in democratic forums like a participatory and direct UN parliamentary assembly or a UN people's assembly, not rich clubs such as G20 or G8.

• At all levels we ask for the development of a democracy that is as participatory as possible, including non representative direct democracy .

• As long as they are practised, electoral systems should be as fair and representative as possible, avoiding biases that distort the principle of proportionality.

• We call for the democratisation of access and management of media. These should serve to educate the public, as opposed to the creation of an artificial consensus about unjust policies.

• We ask for democracy in companies and corporations. Workers, despite wage level or gender, should have real decision-making power in the companies and corporations they work in. We want to promote co-operative companies and corporations, as real democratic economic institutions.

• Zero tolerance of corruption in economic policy. We must stop the excessive influence of big business in politics, which is today a major threat to true democracy.

• We demand complete freedom of expression, assembly and demonstration, as well as the cessation of attempts to censor the internet.

• We demand respect for privacy rights on and off the internet. Companies and the government should not engage in data mining.

• We believe that military spending is politically counterproductive to a society's advance, so we demand its reduction to a minimum.

• Ethnic, cultural and sexual minorities should have their civil, cultural, political and economic rights fully recognised.

• Some of us believe a new Universal Declaration of Human Rights, fit for the 21st century, written in a participatory, direct and democratic way, needs to be written. As long as the current Declaration of Human Rights defines our rights, it must be enforced in relation to all – in both rich and poor countries. Implementing institutions that force compliance and penalise violators need to be established, such as a global court to prosecute social, economic and environmental crimes perpetrated by governments, corporations and individuals. At all levels, local, national, regional and global, new constitutions for political institutions need to be considered, as in Iceland or in some Latin American countries. Justice and law must work for all, otherwise justice is not justice, and law is not law.

This is a worldwide global spring. We will be there and we will fight until we win. We will not stop being people. We are not numbers. We are free women and men.

For a global spring!

For global democracy and social justice!

Take to the streets in May 2012!

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