[ls1z28chris]

No one is ever going to take you seriously, doctorgonzo, if you keep alleging that there is no welfare state or social safety net in America. You may not like the one that exists and may wish to see it expanded, but to argue that there is none is simply false.

You clearly miss the thrust of the argument. You say his concerns can be answered by the fact that there are "simply more people alive today than fifty years ago..." The problem is that he didn't cite raw numbers. He cites percentages of the population. Though wealth in Britain has increased the percentage of Britons receiving "means based assistance" has also increased.

What is to blame is the lazy mentality of people like you. If you want more than two weeks of vacation, get some skills and an education so that you are in a position of strength to argue for more vacation time. Don't ask the state to mandate that you get more time off from your cashier job at Wal-Mart.

You also complain that people in America must have a job in order to have health insurance. Thank you for stating the obvious: In order to pay for things, one must have money. All people here want is more time off and more benefits for less work. This predisposition increases as we become more materially wealthy.

This is mentioned in the speech with regards to cell phone ownership, but it can be expanded to other areas. We are materially wealthy. We have huge flat screen TVs, a car for each adult, cell phones that follow us around wherever we go. We have more stuff, and that stuff takes us less time to earn as costs go down. Yet more people are defined as poor and given government assistance. I've spent time in third world Africa. It makes me sick to hear someone like you, who has a job, gets time off, and enjoys one of the highest standards of living in the world, complain about wages, health insurance, and more time off.