As a left-libertarian, many of your proposals strike a chord with me.

I’ve read his earlier book, Making Globalisation Work, and many of his policy prescriptions mirror yours, although he suffers from the same illusion as other social democrats, that the State always has the public good in mind and all problems can be solved by politicans and government bureacrats.

I very much doubt that the US candidates will have the political drive to usher in such much needed reforms. From what I have seen American politics appears to be rather extreme, vacillating from the neo-con, “market fundamentalism” to social democratic “progressives” (Fabians).

The future costs of healthcare began to concern me when I learnt of the “demographic bulge” of soon to be retiring babyboomers, after its reprecussions came to my attention, most notably its impact on housing prices and future helathcare costs.

Many on the so-called “Left” most likely would denounce me, but I think we need to start managing people’s expectations about the benefits of public provided healthcare or risk it becoming an unsupportable burden. What we need in New Zealand is independant and non-ideological debate, but looking at the quality of debate on a variety of other important subjects, my hope will be likely in vain (education, the environment, trade etc).

I found these articles on the topic interesting and thoughtprovoking and I trust you will find them to be the same.
//www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/01/60minutes/main2528226.shtml