Why people swear so much?

In Alan Ehrenhalt’s article “Maledictoratory, The high costs of low language” he is giving examples and wondering how nowadays people use more swearwords than they used to. I agree with him. People tend to swear a lot in today’s society. Why is that?

For most of the people swearing is an ethical question. Usually people tend to be either against it or for it. I think it depends a lot in what circumstances a child is being raised. If his or her parents cuss a lot, usually the child learns also that it is not wrong and finally starts to use bad language as well.

People who use swearwords usually use them to get their point across more powerfully. Or at least I think if one is using swearwords, he or she tends to be more masculine and have more power.

What makes people swear so much then? Do they think they need to swear to act cool towards their peers?

I was raised in a family that nobody was allowed to swear. I remember once when I was about 12 years old and I said a swearword to my mother and I regretted that long time. Swearing to me is kind of a bad thing to do. Nobody even from my relatives swear, which I now find kind of weird, because now I think that almost everybody swears.

I think people in today’s society swear a lot and that is why one can hear even as young as ten-year-old boys and girls using a bad language at the park or at the school. Isn’t that kind of shame? I really think so. We should ban swearing now and forever. What is the point of using a bad language? Does it make one more cool or popular? I don’t think so. I think that most of the time the consequences are the opposite. As usually older generations really look at people who swear downwards.

Should Health Insurance Belong to Taxation?

Mark Bonicillo comes up with a solution for America’s health insurance problem in his essay “A proposal for Universal Health Insurance in the United States”. He has three suggestions to this problem. First he suggests that “the federal government should break the linkage between health insurance and employment” and “the government should mandate that all adult citizens would purchase individual or family health insurance”. I truly agree with Bonicillo. His suggestion is actually very similar to ours in Finland. Public healthcare is available to all residents in Finland, regardless of their financial situation. In Finland we pay our health insurance in form of taxes. That is why everybody in Finland has their own health insurance. Health centers are also run by municipal councils. Public healthcare services consist of primary healthcare, provided by municipal health centers, and specialized hospital care.

In Finland we pay a lot in taxes. Our taxation of an individual’s income is progressive, which means that the higher your income is, the higher the rate of tax you have to pay is.
In 2006 the income tax rate (national tax) for an individual was between 9%-32.5. In addition to direct taxation there is also municipal tax in Finland. This tax is payable by an individual on his or her income and it fluctuates between 16% - 21% depending on the municipal authority. Church tax is also payable. The combined top marginal tax rate in Finland is about 60%.

I think our system is very good, because everybody has to pay some taxes. But on the other hand, it is almost outrageous how much one has to pay in taxes in Finland.

Do you think our taxation model in Finland would work in America too? Would you consider paying more taxes instead of buying a health insurance?

Do You Complain Too Much?

William F. Buckley Jr. wrote an article “Why Don’t We Complain?” to encourage Americans to complain more. He assumes that people in America are: “…reluctant to make [their] voices heard…”

His article was published in 1960, so a lot has changed after that.

I remember when a guy asked me a couple of months ago what I thought about Americans in general. Then I started to list some characteristics and one of them was that Americans speak a lot. I don’t mean that in an offensive way, I think it’s good to say what people think, we in Finland tend to be too quiet and shy to say anything even if something is wrong.

My point of view has always been that Americans complain a lot, so Buckley’s article doesn’t really make sense to me, even though I know that his article was published in 1960. Sometimes little complaining is good, but if it is whining about small issues I think that can get on one’s nerves.

Buckley also claims that Americans used to take an action if they noticed that something was wrong, but now in the age of technology Americans sense of helplessness has increased, and they will call, for example, the plumber, or the electrician to fix little problems that they could fix themselves.

I really agree with Buckley that people, these days, are very helpless. I think if people were helpless already in 1960, now they are even more helpless.

I think our parents do more things for us today than for example our grandparents did for them. With this statement I mean that we are raised to be helpless, everything has come to us so easily, even the food we eat is usually pre-made.

When it comes to complaining, I really think that people in general complain too much. Unfortunately we usually complain even if we don’t have anything to complain about.

Do you think people complain too much?