alt Hacker NewsI think someone that can carry grandma down the stairs and also occasionally put out a catastrophic fire is a pretty reasonable and efficient use of taxpayer money. The alternative would be what, having two different people to do those things?
Replies
tshaddox • today at 2:25 PM
Well, yes, the alternative would be the necessary number of people to do the first thing and the necessary number of people to do the second thing.
If the two needs are distributed such that it works well to have one group of full-time workers able to do both, then I reckon that’s fine.
It depends. In Ontario (or at least Toronto where I live), the fire department and ambulance services are separate. The paramedics are chronically underfunded and the result is that the fire department is constantly running up milage on multiple expensive and massive fire trucks for routine calls that should just have been a paramedic. This also compounds traffic issues when they park at their destination.
It makes sense for them to automatically show up for some situations (eg car accidents), but there should be a properly funded triage system.
Same goes for the police, which are often called for situations where there should be some other social workers available (again, there are exceptions where police should also be present in those situations).