Sarah Palin: Completely bat****

[KrazyHorse]

Ben's a ****ing idiot. He's a supposed astronomer who doesn't understand how to do a simple classical orbital mechanics problem.

[Ben Kenobi]

KH spouting off bout a post he hasn't read.

Look dude, I edited it before you posted. You might want to actually click on a post,

[Ben Kenobi]

Asher,

You'd expect that given a higher population that you would have fewer nurses per capita, all else being equal. Canada has quite a few small and sparsely populated areas, all with nurses and health care. Compare this with the US with a larger population which is much more dense.

Why don't we talk about things like compensation.

[Asher]

Wow, Ben...Wow.

[ShaneWalter]

The economies of scale wrt nurses per capita could be a valid argument.

My Mom is a nurse, and when she was working in a rural location, most of the time when she'd work nights she would do almost nothing the entire night. If the population that she serviced had been two or three times times as large, they still probably would've only needed one nurse to service the area for the night shifts.

Of course this was also a while ago, and since then, many rural hospitals have been closed down in this province. Still, given Canada's large size, and the fact that most major cities are close to the US border, whereas the USA has a more evenly distributed population, could mean that the average nurse in the USA is more productive. (Productive defined as treating more patients per shift.)

[Solomwi]

Ben, even in its current "fixed" state, it's pretty bad.

[Asher]

22.1% of Canada is rural
20.78% of USA is rural

Difference of 1.32%.

Assuming they're the same definition. Not sure if they are.

[ShaneWalter]

22.1% of Canada is rural
20.78% of USA is rural

Difference of 1.32%.

To be honest, it actually surprises me that Canada has more rural population, and the actual breakdown wrt rural vs urban population wasn't really what I was focusing on.

The difference is if you are living in Northern Saskatchewan, or Nunavut, while there may be a lot of Canada north of you, the only way to get to a decent sized city is to drive (or fly) south. In the USA, with the population more evenly distributed, you are probably going to be pretty close to a city big enough that it could have an efficiently running hospital. (An efficiently running hospital defined as one where during the typical night shift, the nurses spend more time doing work than watching TV. Probably a city >40,000 population.)

[KrazyHorse]

You'd be surprised what counts as "urban" in the US.

In actuality, more of Canada's pop. lives in actual cities compared to the US. But most of us live closer to true "wilderness" than they do. I can drive 3 hours from Montreal and be lost in the Laurentians (10s of miles from the nearest town). It's hard to do that for places where most Americans live.

[Jon Miller]

You can in the Northwest.

JM

[KrazyHorse]

I believe you. But most Americans don't live in the Northwest

[KrazyHorse]

By the way, Jon: you should go look at Ben's orbital mechanics calculations in the "Space Program" thread

[Imran Siddiqui]

Free market!= laisse faire

It's pretty damned close:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market

A free market is a term that economists use to describe a market which is free from economic intervention and regulation by government, other than protection of property rights (i.e. no regulation, no subsidization, no single monetary system, and no governmental monopolies).

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/free+market

an economic system in which prices and wages are determined by unrestricted competition between businesses, without government regulation or fear of monopolies.

Regardless, the United States or other Western democracies are not free market economies. They are mixed economies.

[Jon Miller]

JM

[Jon Miller]

JM