This article reminded me of something I have felt strongly about for years. Dental insurance for all. How much would this cost? About $0.26 an hour or about $42 a month for all workers from the age of 22 until the age of 67. Throw in another $0.75 an hour for medical health and you have health care for all, about $120 a month. Way less than the Social Security deduction of 7.5 % We've beaten the wage horse to death, it seems the most creative and common way corporations improve the bottom line is to cut wages and jobs. In actuality all it accomplishes is obscene wealth at the top and takes wayyyyyyyyyy too much money out of circulation. Wal-Mart employs 1.8 million people, the largest employer in the world. The cost of funding the entire Wal-Mart work force would be about $3.6 billion, about 25% of their yearly profit of $11.2 billion on revenues of almost $316 billion.
Trust me, the money can be found in a pile that big. You know who the forth largest employer in the world is? The US Postal Service. You know how easy it is to rev that engine up? Raise the cost of a postage stamp, do away with subsidizing junk mail and get the Postal Service to join OUR health care program. A nation's wealth is not speculation, hoarding money or monetary extortion, it is the circulation of capital and the production of goods and services. Forget the "car in every garage and a chicken in every pot" Give me beautiful smiles and healthy people! MC
"When you're smilin'....keep on smilin'
The whole world smiles with you
And when you're laughin'....keep on laughin'
The sun comes shinin' through
But when you're cryin'.... you bring on the rain
So stop your frownin'....be happy again
Cause when you're smilin'....keep on smilin'
The whole world smiles with you"
NY TimesJanuary 24, 2011
More to a Smile Than Lips and Teeth
By CARL ZIMMER
In the middle of a phone call four years ago, Paula Niedenthal began to wonder what it really means to smile. The call came from a Russian reporter, who was interviewing Dr. Niedenthal about her research on facial expressions.
"At the end he said, ‘So you are American?’ " Dr. Niedenthal recalled.
Indeed, she is, although she was then living in France, where she had taken a post at Blaise Pascal University.
"So you know," the Russian reporter informed her, "that American smiles are all false, and French smiles are all true."
"Wow, it’s so interesting that you say that," Dr. Niedenthal said diplomatically. Meanwhile, she was imagining what it would have been like to spend most of her life surrounded by fake smiles.
"I suddenly became interested in how people make these kinds of errors," Dr. Niedenthal said. But finding the source of the error would require knowing what smiles really are — where they come from and how people process them. And despite the fact that smiling is one of the most common things that we humans do, Dr. Niedenthal found science’s explanation for it to be weak...........
Continued:
More to a Smile Than Lips and Teeth