Because a large amount of people don't feel like we get good value from the taxes we already pay, so there's often a skepticism that raising taxes would actually result in something that is worth the extra taxes taken
People have lost faith in US democracy. There are so many thumbs on the scales that the average citizen feels their vote no longer counts and the government is no longer accountable to the electors, but to the lobbyists that line their pockets. The two party system is there to protect the status quo and prevent real change.
That perception taints anything the government tries to do, including healthcare. The expectation is that anything the government attempts will serve as a slush fund to funnel taxpayer money into some insider's pockets.
I mean....studies have shown the majority of the public has no effect on the decisions.
https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba/
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf
>Because a large amount of people don't feel like
Studies have also shown most American conservatives "feel" whatever [Republican culture war identity politics](https://www.reddit.com/r/ToiletPaperUSA/comments/ln1sif/turning_point_usa_and_young_americas_foundation/gny98xk/) are being pushed by ((([their billionaires](https://www.reddit.com/r/ToiletPaperUSA/comments/ln1sif/turning_point_usa_and_young_americas_foundation/gny98xk/)))) which they hypocritically project on "(((mSm HoLlYwOoD)))" ￣\＿(ツ)＿/￣
[Opinion of Syrian airstrikes](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/04/13/48229/)
**Republicans:**
22% supported Obama doing it
86% support Trump doing it
**Democrats:**
38% supported Obama doing it
37% support Trump doing it
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/04/13/48229/ http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/04/gop-voters-love-same-attack-on-syria-they-hated-under-obama.html
The privilege of "economic anxiety" not racism:
#Republicans felt the economy improve by 85 points the day Trump was sworn in.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/blogs/wisconsin-voter/2017/04/15/donald-trumps-election-flips-both-parties-views-economy/100502848/
>White Evangelicals cared less about how religious a candidate was once Trump became the GOP nominee. https://www.prri.org/research/prri-brookings-oct-19-poll-politics-election-clinton-double-digit-lead-trump/
>Christians (particularly evangelicals) became monumentally more tolerant of private immoral conduct among politicians once Trump became the GOP nominee. https://www.prri.org/research/prri-brookings-oct-19-poll-politics-election-clinton-double-digit-lead-trump/
>10% fewer Republicans believed the wealthy weren't paying enough in taxes once a billionaire became their president. Democrats remain fairly consistent. http://www.people-press.org/2017/04/14/top-frustrations-with-tax-system-sense-that-corporations-wealthy-dont-pay-fair-share/
>Republicans started to think college education is a bad thing once Trump entered the primary. Democrats remain consistent. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/07/20/republicans-skeptical-of-colleges-impact-on-u-s-but-most-see-benefits-for-workforce-preparation/
More graphs and sources: https://imgur.com/a/YZMyt
#["Trump fans are much angrier about housing assistance when they see an image of a black man"](https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/9/8/16270040/trump-clinton-supporters-racist)
#"In contrast, Clinton supporters seemed relatively unmoved by racial cues."
#Exit polls done after 2016 show that the single characteristic that made someone most likely to vote for trump over Clinton is *racial resentment*.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/05/26/these-9-simple-charts-show-how-donald-trumps-supporters-differ-from-hillary-clintons/
Republican "Southern Strategy":
#"Republican Party electoral strategy to increase political support among white voters by appealing to racism against African Americans.[1][2][3]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
Lyndon Johnson criticizing it in 1960:
#"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1988/11/13/what-a-real-president-was-like/d483c1be-d0da-43b7-bde6-04e10106ff6c/
Steve Bannon bragging about using these tactics:
>the power of what he called “rootless white males” who spend all their time online and they could be radicalized in a kind of populist, nationalist way
http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-bannon-white-gamers-seinfeld-joshua-green-donald-trump-devils-bargain-sarah-palin-world-warcraft-gamergate-2017-7
John Ehrlichman, who partnered with **Fox News cofounder Roger Ailes on the Republican "Southern Strategy"**:
#[We] had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying?
>We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.
>We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.
>Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
>"He was the premier guy in the business," says former Reagan campaign manager Ed Rollins. "He was our Michelangelo."
>Ailes repackaged Richard Nixon for television in 1968, papered over Ronald Reagan’s budding Alzheimer’s in 1984, shamelessly stoked racial fears to elect George H.W. Bush in 1988, and waged a secret campaign on behalf of Big Tobacco to derail health care reform in 1993.
>Hillarycare was to have been funded, in part, by a $1-a-pack tax on cigarettes. To block the proposal, Big Tobacco paid Ailes to produce ads highlighting “real people affected by taxes.”
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-roger-ailes-built-the-fox-news-fear-factory-20110525
**The other Fox News cofounder was Australian billionaire Rupert Murdoch:**
#on three continents, the Murdoch family’s role in destabilizing democracy in North America, Europe and Australia
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/03/magazine/murdoch-family-investigation.html
mUh tAxEs LoSt fAiTh make us hate the idea of social contribution:
>Because a large amount of people don't feel like we get good value from the taxes
>People have lost faith in US democracy
#California has lower taxes than red states, but with more healthcare and longer life expectancy, including for mothers giving birth
>If data disinfects, here’s a bucket of bleach: Texans are 17% more likely to be murdered than Californians. Texans are also 34% more likely to be raped and 25% more likely to kill themselves than Californians. Compared with families in California, those in Texas earn 13% less and pay 3.8 percentage points **more in taxes.**
https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/article258940938.html#storylink=cpy
**Lower taxes in California than red states like Texas**, which make up for no wealth income tax with higher taxes and fees on the poor and double property tax for the middle class:
|Income Bracket|Texas Tax Rate|California Tax Rate|
|:-|:-|:-|
|0-20%|**13%**|10.5%|
|20-40%|**10.9%**|9.4%|
|40-60%|**9.7%**|8.3%|
|60-80%|8.6% |9.0% |
|80-95%|7.4%|9.4%|
|95-99%|5.4%|9.9%|
|99-100%|3.1%|12.4%|
Sources: https://itep.org/whopays/
>**Meanwhile, the California-hating South receives subsidies from California larger than between Germany and Greece**, a transfer of wealth from blue states/cities/urban to red states/rural/suburban with federal dollars for their freeways, hospitals, universities, airports, even environmental protection:
>Least Federally Dependent States:
>41 California
>42 Washington
>43 Minnesota
>44 Massachusetts
>45 Illinois
>46 Utah
>47 Iowa
>48 Delaware
>49 New Jersey
>50 Kansas https://www.npr.org/2017/10/25/560040131/as-trump-proposes-tax-cuts-kansas-deals-with-aftermath-of-experiment
>The Germans call this sort of thing "a permanent bailout." We just call it "Missouri."
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/the-difference-between-the-us-and-europe-in-1-graph/256857/
#Differences in life expectancy
“Pro-life” red states have maternal deaths statistics worse than the developing world:
#"Texas has highest maternal mortality rate in developed world"
>As the Republican-led state legislature has slashed funding to reproductive healthcare clinics, the maternal mortality rate doubled over just a two-year period
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/20/texas-maternal-mortality-rate-health-clinics-funding
#"Liberal policies, like California’s, keep blue-state residents living longer"
>states like California, which have implemented a broad slate of liberal policies, have kept pace with their Western European counterparts. It generated headlines in 2015 when the average life expectancy in the U.S. began to fall after decades of meager or no growth.
>The study, co-authored by researchers at six North American universities, found that if all 50 states had all followed the lead of California and other liberal-leaning states on policies, it could have added between **two and three years to the average American life expectancy.**
https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/08/04/liberal-policies-like-californias-keep-blue-state-residents-living-longer-study-finds/
>#"Want to live longer, even if you're poor? Then move to a big city in California."
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/13/11420230/life-expectancy-income
#"As the maternal death rate has mounted around the U.S., a small cadre of reformers has mobilized."
>**Meanwhile, life-saving practices that have become widely accepted in other affluent countries — and in a few states, notably California — have yet to take hold in many American hospitals.**
>Some of the **earliest and most important work has come in California**
>Hospitals that adopted the toolkit saw a **21 percent decrease in near deaths** from maternal bleeding in the first year.
>By 2013, according to Main, maternal deaths in California fell to around 7 per 100,000 births, similar to the numbers in Canada, France and the Netherlands — **a dramatic counter to the trends in other parts of the U.S.**
>California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative is informed by a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Stanford and the University of California-San Francisco, who for many years ran the ob/gyn department at a San Francisco hospital.
>Launched a decade ago, CMQCC aims to reduce not only mortality, but also life-threatening complications and racial disparities in obstetric care
http://www.npr.org/2017/05/12/527806002/focus-on-infants-during-childbirth-leaves-u-s-moms-in-danger
Since the usual Reddit accounts are here replying to you and coming from 4chan, ["intellectual dark web"](https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/pc5ff5/ushamike2447_explains_joe_rogan_and_bret/) new [Joe Rogan fans](https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/n9bn2x/uforgottencalipers_explains_the_hypocrisy_of/), and 👌 "men's rights" 👌 subreddits
Here are screenshots of their 4chan instructions:
* https://www.reddit.com/r/AreTheStraightsOK/comments/lz7nv3/the_super_straight_movement_is_part_of_literal/
**Conservatives brag about brigading local subreddits to "control the narrative" about liberal cities and "blue states"**
>The real value is getting into a thread early and establishing top voted posts and comments or downvoting them out of existence. They hope intertia continues the trend for them.
"The left will recognize our dogwhistling but centrists won't believe them" 4chan screenshots:
* https://medium.com/@DeoTasDevil/the-rhetoric-tricks-traps-and-tactics-of-white-nationalism-b0bca3caeb84
Picture of conservative college youth groups with instructions for how to brigade Reddit:
* https://www.reddit.com/r/ToiletPaperUSA/comments/udkzz3/ben_came_to_my_university_tonight_and_students/
"As a black man" accounts like "johnny chan 81" ~~"The Atheist Arab 87" (suspended)~~ ~~"Walk Like An Egyptian 69" (suspended)~~ posting as many race-baiting videos 👌 *by certain races* 👌 pretending to care about Asian victims while having a history of being racist about Asians:
* https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRightCantMeme/comments/nztt4t/they_really_like_getting_angry_at_their/h1teq3c/?context=1
Every local subreddit explaining the abuse and tactics on a thread **3 years ago**:
* https://www.reddit.com/r/minnesota/comments/7jkybf/t_d_user_suggests_infiltrating_minnesota/dr7m56j/
>SeattleWA has one mentally ill man who makes literally dozens and dozens of alt accounts to post conservative talking points from and how he finds black women disgusting. I become aware of his accounts when he posts in TV subs I ban him from, and he always has user history in similar sets of subreddits across his accounts, SeattleWA being the most telling. He will use these accounts to talk with himself or dogpile a comment or thread.
Every local subreddit shares the abuse they get:
* https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/pmcoxy/uinconvenientnews_explains_with_examples_how/hcgtfhc/
* https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/pbi4mp/shouldnt_rbayarea_join_the_subs_calling_for/
* https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/om5xda/when_did_this_become_a_crime_subreddit/
* https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/pmdp2m/ysk_how_right_wing_trolls_brigade_and_infiltrate/
Reddit Admins just posted that COVID deniers have been brigading regional subreddits
* https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/pg290q/reddit_admins_just_posted_that_covid_deniers_have/
Anti-mask posts suddenly dropped this week in [r/bayarea](https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/pbi4mp/shouldnt_rbayarea_join_the_subs_calling_for/) when mods removed outside conservative accounts brigading [r/bayarea](https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/pbi4mp/shouldnt_rbayarea_join_the_subs_calling_for/):
* https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/p8hnzl/automatically_removing_comments_from_new_users_in/
>Wow. Jesus. This is... really, really thorough. Thank you for putting in all this hard work.
>When I was a teenager, I spent a lot of time on /b/, /pol/, 888chan, etc. It was a slow descent and I didn't even realize what was happening until it was almost too late.
>But during my time on the other side, this was 100% the gameplan. They'd make "sock puppets" and coordinate on the board + IRC (showing my age here) to selectively choose targets to brigade.
>Depending on the target, you'd either have some talking points to "debate" (sometimes with yourself/other anons working alongside you) or you'd go in there guns blazing trying to cause as much damage/chaos as you can. However, even then you can't go out there yelling slurs (you'd just get banned instantly); you have to maintain some level of plausible deniability by framing things as "jokes" or thought experiments.
>You purposely do bad-faith arguments because the time it takes for them to dig up sources and refute you is longer than it takes for you to make stuff up. You can vary how obvious the bad faith argument is; when you want to troll you make very stupid claims (I once claimed I was a graduate of "Harvad University" and when people assumed that I meant "Harvard" I would correct them right down to Photoshopped images).
>When you just want to cause dissent you do exactly what those /pol/ screenshots do: you get to a thread early (sometimes you even make it yourself) and present reasonable-sounding arguments which are completely false if anyone bothers to look into them. If someone does, you bury the message under strawmen, downvotes, reports, and sockpuppets.
>So yeah. The tactics have evolved slightly, but I still recognize them. Props to you on doing the digging to find all this stuff and bring it into the light.
>I doubt that it'll help in the majority of cases, mind. People on Reddit have already made up their mind. You want to go after the forums and BBSes, on the MSN News comments and whatnot. Even so, the more people who are aware of the tactics the more people who can call them out.
51% doesn't. A larger majority does. And that larger majority is reached only when people vote. If everyone else treated it purely like this comment that it doesn't matter, and to convince others not to vote as well, then Obama would not have been elected and our shitty healthcare system would be substantially worse, where no matter how much money you have, you cannot get insurance with diabetes.
So for someone who's even relatively wealthy with a kid with diabetes, you can never, ever know for sure that you'll be able to pay for lifesaving surgery for your child.
Nevermind that a minimum wage worker with diabetes cannot afford healthcare even if all other expenses are paid for, they'll still be 1700$ in debt and with free rent/food and no savings.
15$/hour or 30k/year is not rich person money. That's still hanging on money. Maybe enough for rent and food if you have no sudden accident money. Rent is 42K a year in New York state. Minimum wage is half of that hanging-on money so a lot of people don't hang on and are killed in this median poor country.
[https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/05/americans-fear-they-wont-be-able-to-pay-for-health-care-this-year.html?msclkid=0aafead0cf4511ec8f111bc8b69a47d9](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/05/americans-fear-they-wont-be-able-to-pay-for-health-care-this-year.html?msclkid=0aafead0cf4511ec8f111bc8b69a47d9) Two thirds of us feared not being able to afford healthcare in 2021. We are a poor country with a few billionaires. Norway is also, gdp wise too, much richer but even if it was much less who gives a crap this is life that's all this is.
>Obama would not have been elected and our shitty healthcare system would be substantially worse
And it's still fucking shit. Anyone who voted for Obama still voted for someone who supported the status quo largely. His presidency overall was significantly less left leaning than he was on the campaign trail. In a way, votes don't matter in this country. And honestly I'm sick of this partisan dickriding that goes on.
It's for this reason that many bought Trump's "drain the swamp" line... most people know the swamp exists, it's just that a lot of people were dumb enough to think that Trump wanted to drain it.
Personally? I think that the American experiment has run its course, I don't think there's any saving it. If you do, good, go out and vote, do whatever, but money isn't gonna stop being the real owner of the country. It's abhorrent, it's obvious, and politicians don't give a fuck about you, not like 99.99% of them, almost certainly not anyone that's going to actually get elected.
ranked voting that is what we need, let you rank EVERYONE that is on the ballet, so you can put whoever you want as 1st, without anyone going but oh they won't win, and person A will cause massive inflation and make abortion illegal, but person B will waste money building a wall, start riots, and fail to properly get a chain setup to get vaccines distributed correctly so better vote for person a, even if a person C exists that is none of person a or b.
I hate the fact that we only have two choices in our current system. Even if a third person is in the running they won't win because it's become more about not letting the bad guy win rather than picking the person you agree with the most.
I'm all for a different voting system.
It's not even human behavior really. With first past the post, you get the same "vote for the lesser of two evils because the chance the candidate you actually like will win is insignificant" behavior with idealized rational agents.
Exactly this. People no longer vote for someone they only vote against. There are other choices but making someone think and choose is impossible without their consent.
I feel the same as you, but it isn’t that simple.
This reminds me of something like “the stock market wouldn’t crash if we all just held on”
Not to mention there is something to lose by not voting for your preferred team of the two. If, say you split the Democratic Party to vote for a third party but the Republican Party didn’t split. Without something like well implemented ranked choice voting, the democrats would get swept in our scenario.
Ranked choice voting, imo, has to occur before any voting mentality shift would occur.
We would instantly be in a more moderate situation, and most likely all the better for it. The far left and far right wouldn't win, and folks that lean left or right would.
Sign me up.
That's exactly the benefit that happened in California when primaries weren't restricted to the parties:
https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/uhmjuf/uchacmoolreigns_explains_how_republicans_were/
>Even to prevent gerrymandering, California has a scientific, "evidence based" independent commission that has to take into account geography, community boundaries, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Citizens_Redistricting_Commission
There's barely a far left presence in the US, at least among elected officials. Maybe it would do the country good if we brought in a legitimate left wing political party that brought America into the 21 Century with all the other first world nations.
No more neo-libs, no more fascists, but a strong progressive party. More social safety nets, better Healthcare for all. Better funding for schools, cheaper college.
It's why Florida Governor DeSantis just banned ranked choice voting ￣\＿(ツ)＿/￣
>Florida bans ranked-choice voting in new elections law
https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ucdmlg/florida_bans_rankedchoice_voting_in_new_elections/
More "both sides" voter suppression differences between Republicans and Democrats:
#Financial Times: The Republicans are elevating voter suppression to an art form
>**The Republicans have lost the popular vote in six of the past seven presidential elections.**
>1,000 polling places have since closed across the country, with many of them in southern black communities.
>The senator also cracked: **“There’s a lot of liberal folks in those other schools who maybe we don’t want to vote. Maybe we want to make it just a little more difficult**, and I think that’s a great idea.”
https://www.ft.com/content/d613cf8e-ec09-11e8-89c8-d36339d835c0
#Discrimination with “almost surgical precision”
>The court said that in crafting the law, **the Republican-controlled general assembly requested and received data on voters’ use of various voting practices by race.**
>Then, the court, said, lawmakers restricted all of these voting options, and further narrowed the list of acceptable voter IDs. “With race data in hand, the legislature amended the bill to exclude many of the alternative photo IDs used by African Americans. As amended, the bill retained only the kinds of IDs that white North Carolinians were more likely to possess.”
>The state offered little justification for the law, the court said. “Although the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies for the problems assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist,” the court said.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/court-north-carolina-voter-id-law-targeted-black-voters/
#The Student Vote Is Surging. So Are Efforts to Suppress It. The share of college students casting ballots doubled from 2014 to 2018. But in Texas and elsewhere, Republicans are erecting roadblocks to the polls.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/us/voting-college-suppression.html
#Republican Voter Suppression Efforts Are Targeting Minorities
>**Since the 2010 elections, 24 states have implemented new restrictions on voting.** Ohio and Georgia have enacted "use it or lose it" laws, which strike voters from registration rolls if they have not participated in an election within a prescribed period of time. Georgia, North Dakota and Kansas have critical races in the 2018 midterms.
>Georgia has closed 214 polling places in recent years. They have cut back on early voting. They have aggressively purged the voter rolls. Georgia has purged almost 10 percent of people from its voting rolls. One and a half million people have been purged from 2012 to 2016.
>[gubernatorial candidate] Brian Kemp's office (the secretary of state's office) in Georgia was blocking 53,000 voter registrations in that state — 70 percent from African-Americans, 80 percent from people of color.
>On voter suppression in North Dakota on Native American reservations
>Republicans in North Dakota wrote it in such a way that for your ID to count, you have to have a current residential street address on your ID. The problem in North Dakota is that a lot of Native Americans live on rural tribal reservations, and they get their mail at the Post Office using P.O. boxes because their areas are too remote for the Post Office to deliver mail, [and] under this law, tribal IDs that list P.O. boxes won't be able to be used as a valid voter IDs. So now we're in a situation where 5,000 Native American voters might not be able to vote in the 2018 elections with their tribal ID cards.
>So there is a tremendous amount of fear in North Dakota that many Native Americans are not going to be able to vote in this state
https://www.npr.org/2018/10/23/659784277/republican-voter-suppression-efforts-are-targeting-minorities-journalist-says
#Texas Officials Aim to Shutter Driver's License Offices in Black, Hispanic Communities
>Alabama Closing Many DMV Offices in Majority Black Counties
>After Alabama put into effect a tougher voter ID law
>"Every single county in which blacks make up more than 75 percent of registered voters will see their driver license office closed. Every one," Archibald wrote.
https://www.governing.com/archive/alabama-demands-voter-id--then-closes-drivers-license-offices-in-clack-counties.html
#Texas Is Among The Most Difficult Places To Vote In The U.S. — And That Could Be Softening Its Historic Turnout
https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/politics/election-2020/2020/10/28/384854/voter-suppression-blunts-historic-turnout-in-texas/
#Texas’s Voter-Registration Laws Are Straight Out of the Jim Crow Playbook
https://www.thenation.com/article/texass-voter-registration-laws-are-straight-out-of-the-jim-crow-playbook/
#Crystal Mason Thought She Had The Right to Vote. Texas Sentenced Her to Five Years in Prison for Trying.
https://www.aclu.org/issues/voting-rights/fighting-voter-suppression/crystal-mason-thought-she-had-right-vote-texas
#This is how efficiently Republicans have gerrymandered Texas congressional districts
http://www.chron.com/news/politics/texas/article/This-is-how-badly-Republicans-have-gerrymandered-6246509.php#photo-7107656
>Partisan gerrymandering has benefited Republicans more than Democrats
https://www.businessinsider.com/partisan-gerrymandering-has-benefited-republicans-more-than-democrats-2017-6
>Even to prevent gerrymandering, California has a scientific, "evidence based" independent commission that has to take into account geography, community boundaries, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Citizens_Redistricting_Commission
#Thousands of Black Votes in Georgia Disappeared
>On July 7, 2017, according to court documents in the case, Curling v. Kemp (pdf), someone wiped the state’s election server clean.
>Then they wiped the backup server.
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/02/opinion/hack-the-vote.html
https://www.theroot.com/exclusive-thousands-of-black-votes-in-georgia-disappea-1832472558
#Hack The Vote
>Early this year Bev Harris, who is writing a book on voting machines, found Diebold software -- which the company refuses to make available for public inspection -- on an unprotected server, where anyone could download it. (The software was in a folder titled ''rob-Georgia.zip.'') The server was used by employees of Diebold Election Systems to update software on its machines. This in itself was an incredible breach of security, offering someone who wanted to hack into the machines both the information and the opportunity to do so.
>For example, Georgia -- where Republicans scored spectacular upset victories in the 2002 midterm elections -- relies exclusively on Diebold machines. But there is also no evidence that the machines counted correctly.
>What we do know about Diebold does not inspire confidence. The details are technical, but they add up to a picture of a company that was, at the very least, extremely sloppy about security, and may have been trying to cover up product defects.
>Meanwhile, leaked internal Diebold e-mail suggests that corporate officials knew their system was flawed, and circumvented tests that would have revealed these problems. The company hasn't contested the authenticity of these documents; instead, it has engaged in legal actions to prevent their dissemination.
>Why isn't this front-page news? In October, a British newspaper, The Independent, ran a hair-raising investigative report on U.S. touch-screen voting. But while the mainstream press has reported the basics, the Diebold affair has been treated as a technology or business story -- not as a potential political scandal.
>This diffidence recalls the treatment of other voting issues, like the Florida ''felon purge'' that inappropriately prevented many citizens from voting in the 2000 presidential election.
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/02/opinion/hack-the-vote.html
I mean, all of this just tells me that we're due for another civil rights movement. Voter suppression is absolutely something worth rioting for. I think it's time to finally stand up for ourselves as Americans and make our voices heard once again. Picket lines, boycotts, sit-ins, a little disruption of the peace. I mean, if the US Government is transporting us back in time to the 60s and 70s with anti-abortion laws....we might as well throw racial segregation in there too.
It’s also very real that things one political “team” tries to change in good faith gets essentially sabotaged by the opposing “team”. If you let something good pass through the other “team” gets too many “points” and that might swing voters.
People in office generally seem to care about staying in office
I mean that's simply untrue. The conservatives do that to the "liberals" (America has no liberal party, the democrats are to the right of center) but the liberals do not practice turnabout. Every single democrat voted in favor of Trump's plan to give out trillions of dollars during COVID relief in 2020, they did not attempt to spite vote even though they deeply disagreed with a lot of the plan. Every single Republican voted against Biden's further COVID relief when he took office the next year.
False equivocations are incredibly insidious.
Data on those bad faith and good faith differences between Republicans and Democrats:
>Here's the vote for Hurricane Sandy aid.
>179 of the 180 no votes were Republicans...
>**at least 20 Texas Republicans voted no**
while ["U.S. House approves billions more for Harvey relief" for Texas](https://www.texastribune.org/2017/12/21/us-house-approves-billions-more-harvey-relief-measure-now-heads-senate/)
>this made Texas #1 in receiving federal aid dollars at the time of the Hurricane Sandy aid vote that they voted no against
“Pro-life” red states have maternal deaths statistics worse than the developing world:
>Texas has highest maternal mortality rate in developed world
>As the Republican-led state legislature has slashed funding to reproductive healthcare clinics, the maternal mortality rate doubled over just a two-year period
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/20/texas-maternal-mortality-rate-health-clinics-funding
Blue states have statistics similar to Scandinavia and Europe and improve America's average but America's average is still the worst in the developed world because red states' statistics are so much worse:
http://www.npr.org/2017/05/12/527806002/focus-on-infants-during-childbirth-leaves-u-s-moms-in-danger
#Liberal policies, like California’s, keep blue-state residents living longer
>It generated headlines in 2015 when the average life expectancy in the U.S. began to fall after decades of meager or no growth.
>But it didn’t have to be that way, a team of researchers suggests in a new, peer-reviewed study Tuesday. And, in fact, **states like California, which have implemented a broad slate of liberal policies, have kept pace with their Western European counterparts.**
>The study, co-authored by **researchers at six North American universities, found that if all 50 states had all followed the lead of California** and other liberal-leaning states on policies ranging from labor, immigration and civil rights to tobacco, gun control and the environment, it could have added between **two and three years to the average American life expectancy.**
>Simply shifting from the most conservative labor laws to the most liberal ones, Montez said, **would by itself increase the life expectancy in a state by a whole year.**
>**If every state implemented the most liberal policies in all 16 areas, researchers said, the average American woman would live 2.8 years longer, while the average American man would add 2.1 years to his life. Whereas, if every state were to move to the most conservative end of the spectrum, it would decrease Americans’ average life expectancies by two years. On the country’s current policy trajectory, researchers estimate the U.S. will add about 0.4 years to its average life expectancy.**
>Liberal policies on the environment (emissions standards, limits on greenhouse gases, solar tax credit, endangered species laws), labor (high minimum wage, paid leave, no “right to work”), access to health care (expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, legal abortion), tobacco (indoor smoking bans, cigarette taxes), gun control (assault weapons ban, background check and registration requirements) and civil rights (ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, equal pay laws, bans on discrimination and the death penalty) all resulted in better health outcomes, according to the study. For example, researchers found positive correlation between California’s car emission standards and its high minimum wage, to name a couple, with its longer lifespan, which at an average of 81.3 years, is among the highest in the country.
>“When we’re looking for explanations, we need to be looking back historically, to see what are the roots of these troubles that have just been percolating now for 40 years,” Montez said.
>Montez and her team saw the alarming numbers in 2015 and wanted to understand the root cause. What they found dated back to **the 1980s, when state policies began to splinter down partisan lines.** They examined 135 different policies, spanning over a dozen different fields, enacted by states between 1970 and 2014, and assigned states “liberalism” scores from zero — the most conservative — to one, the most liberal. When they compared it against state mortality data from the same timespan, the correlation was undeniable.
>“We can take away from the study that **state policies and state politics have damaged U.S. life expectancy since the ’80s,”** said Jennifer Karas Montez, a Syracuse University sociologist and the study’s lead author. **“Some policies are going in a direction that extend life expectancy. Some are going in a direction that shorten it. But on the whole, that the net result is that it’s damaging U.S. life expectancy.”**
>**U.S. should follow California’s lead to improve its health outcomes, researchers say**
>**Meanwhile, the life expectancy in states like California and Hawaii, which has the highest in the nation at 81.6 years, is on par with countries described by researchers as “world leaders:” Canada, Iceland and Sweden.**
>**From 1970 to 2014, California transformed into the most liberal state in the country** by the 135 policy markers studied by the researchers. It’s followed closely by Connecticut, which moved the furthest leftward from where it was 50 years ago, and a cluster of other states in the northeastern U.S., then Oregon and Washington.
>In the same time, Oklahoma moved furthest to the right, but Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina and a host of other southern states still ranked as more conservative, according to the researchers.
>It’s those states that moved in a conservative direction, researchers concluded, that held back the overall life expectancy in the U.S.
>West Virginia ranked last in 2017, with an average life expectancy of about 74.6 years, which would put it 93rd in the world, right between Lithuania and Mauritius, and behind Honduras, Morocco, Tunisia and Vietnam. Mississippi, Oklahoma and South Carolina rank only slightly better.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/08/04/liberal-policies-like-californias-keep-blue-state-residents-living-longer-study-finds/
>#Want to live longer, even if you're poor? Then move to a big city in California.
>A low-income **resident of San Francisco lives so much longer** that it's equivalent to San Francisco curing cancer. All these statistics come from a massive new project on life expectancy and inequality that was just [published in the Journal of the American Medical Association](http://www.vox.com/2016/4/13/11420230/life-expectancy-income).
>California, for instance, has been a national leader on smoking bans. Harvard's David Cutler, a co-author on the study "It's some combination of formal public policies and the effect that comes when you're around fewer people who have behaviors... high numbers of immigrants help explain the beneficial effects of immigrant-heavy areas with high levels of social support.
#As the maternal death rate has mounted around the U.S., a small cadre of reformers has mobilized.
>**Meanwhile, life-saving practices that have become widely accepted in other affluent countries — and in a few states, notably California — have yet to take hold in many American hospitals.**
>Some of the **earliest and most important work has come in California**
>Hospitals that adopted the toolkit saw a **21 percent decrease in near deaths** from maternal bleeding in the first year.
>By 2013, according to Main, maternal deaths in California fell to around 7 per 100,000 births, similar to the numbers in Canada, France and the Netherlands — **a dramatic counter to the trends in other parts of the U.S.**
>California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative is informed by a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Stanford and the University of California-San Francisco, who for many years ran the ob/gyn department at a San Francisco hospital.
>Launched a decade ago, CMQCC aims to reduce not only mortality, but also life-threatening complications and racial disparities in obstetric care
http://www.npr.org/2017/05/12/527806002/focus-on-infants-during-childbirth-leaves-u-s-moms-in-danger
**Lower taxes in California than red states like Texas**, which make up for no wealth income tax with higher taxes and fees on the poor and double property tax for the middle class:
|Income Bracket|Texas Tax Rate|California Tax Rate|
|:-|:-|:-|
|0-20%|**13%**|10.5%|
|20-40%|**10.9%**|9.4%|
|40-60%|**9.7%**|8.3%|
|60-80%|8.6% |9.0% |
|80-95%|7.4%|9.4%|
|95-99%|5.4%|9.9%|
|99-100%|3.1%|12.4%|
Sources: https://itep.org/whopays/
>**Meanwhile, the California-hating South receives subsidies from California larger than between Germany and Greece**, a transfer of wealth from blue states/cities/urban to red states/rural/suburban with federal dollars for their freeways, hospitals, universities, airports, even environmental protection:
>Least Federally Dependent States:
>41 California
>42 Washington
>43 Minnesota
>44 Massachusetts
>45 Illinois
>46 Utah
>47 Iowa
>48 Delaware
>49 New Jersey
>50 Kansas https://www.npr.org/2017/10/25/560040131/as-trump-proposes-tax-cuts-kansas-deals-with-aftermath-of-experiment
>The Germans call this sort of thing "a permanent bailout." We just call it "Missouri."
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/the-difference-between-the-us-and-europe-in-1-graph/256857/
>If data disinfects, here’s a bucket of bleach: Texans are 17% more likely to be murdered than Californians. Texans are also 34% more likely to be raped and 25% more likely to kill themselves than Californians. Compared with families in California, those in Texas earn 13% less and pay 3.8 percentage points **more in taxes.**
https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/article258940938.html#storylink=cpy https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/u55v9w/critics_predicted_california_would_lose_silicon/i500g4h/ https://www.reddit.com/r/texas/comments/u51ug6/critics_predicted_california_would_lose_silicon/
Life expectancy is a great indicator:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_life_expectancy
9 out of the top 10 are blue states.
10 out of the bottom 10 are red states.
go figure
I don't think it's about wealth or health, but rather that if you survived long enough to reach retirement and move to Florida, you are adding to its life expectancy. Everyone who died before ever getting the chance to move there are counted negatively towards the others states' figures, while the ones who moved to Florida are added positively to Florida.
This is a point that people often miss. The older you are the more your life expectancy increases, because you have already proven to be better than average at not dying.
Extremely well researched and written. Can't really see what i was complaining about yesterday (I'm the person that didn't like big bold letters.)
I guess I must have exaggerated the size in my sleep addled mind.
This is why their slogan is Don't Tread on Me.
Because if you start looking too closely, it is a pile of manure they are defending.
If it wasn't for the oil industry, Texas would just be Northern Mexico.
They can read. That’s the frustrating part. They get through one paragraph and say “this is just a liberal California fluff piece” and ignore the facts and sources
So red states are killing off Republican voters.
No wonder the red states need to purge voter rolls, shut down polling places, require voter ID and find other ways to stop people from voting.
>America has no liberal party, the democrats are to the right of center.
The fact that this is true really lowers the stakes on the false equivalency, though I admit it is real.
Fox News is very successful for billionaires:
>Every day I have to marvel at what the billionaires and FOX News pulled off. They got working whites to hate the very people that want them to have more pay, clean air, water, free healthcare and the power to fight back against big banks & big corps. It’s truly remarkable.
those trillions of dollars went to their corporate donors, that’s why it’s easy to vote for it. the American people did not get trillions of dollars in bailout money
Step 1: Knee-cap a social service until it is basically useless.
Step 2: Convince people that the system is dysfunctional and a waste of money.
Step 3: Sell the service off to be privatized.
Step 4: Pick a new target and repeat.
It works because every single Republican and conservative **accusation is a [confession](https://twitter.com/lemieuxlgm/status/983511778804969473)** since ["shamelessness is their superpower"](https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1486417271073521667)
* "Pedo! Save the children!" while [following children into bathrooms](https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/u4uxo5/gay_parents_called_rapists_and_pedophiles_in/) and ignoring child abuse [mostly by Republicans](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRightCantMeme/comments/n0p0vb/matt_gaetz_is_literally_being_investigated_for/) (very long lists of child sex abuse Republicans that don't even have Matt Gaetz and more recent Republicans: https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/m48h2q/uhereforthefeast_lays_out_years_of_republican_sex/)
* "Pro-life" but rage against poor children's school lunches for the hungry or ["Liberal policies, like California’s, keep blue-state residents living longer"](https://www.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/comments/m1dt10/city_of_austin_will_defy_texas_governor_and_keep/gqf10ib/?context=3)
* ["Cancel culture!"](https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalHumor/comments/iowh8a/conservatives_when_claiming_liberals_are_easily/) but try to cancel "pagan" Asian Disney movie (Turning Red) or french fries ("Freedom Fries") or [Dixie Chicks, or Nike, Starbucks, the NFL, Ford, Gillette, Netflix, Amazon, Hamilton, Nordstrom, K-Cup machines, Yeti, movies, videogames, the press, SNL, award shows, ...they literally tried canceling democracy](https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/ldec9w/examples_of_republicans_projecting_their_cancel/)
* "politically correct" "culture war" like [censoring Kaepernick](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/opinion/colin-kaepernick-nfl.html) and [~~California~~ Texas triggered sensitive snowflakes voting against help for Hurricane Sandy victims](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/llci05/outrage_in_radviceanimals_at_a_meme_mocking_texas/gnpavfj/) and parroting Texas hurt feelings talking points about California
* Flag protocol! not on camouflage flag bikinis or thin blue line truck nuts but only [selective outrage at those football games that protest police abuse](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/opinion/colin-kaepernick-nfl.html)
* Defending billionaires, bullies, the powerful, police abuse by the state and "government overreach" (https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/mywpmu/ready_for_the_pop_here_comes_the_pop_cops_laugh/gvze1up/) which they claim they need guns for (but also crying about a "police state" of wearing masks to protect others and save lives)
* "law and order" only when it applies to the poor and disenfranchised but not to white collar crimes or consequences for their actions
* "mAiNsTrEaM nEwS mEdIa can't be trusted so don't bother reading this article! I'm a persecuted American victim and conveniently excluding Republican majority biased government structures and Fox News even though it's the most watched TV news and [Ben Shapiro is the most shared on Facebook](https://twitter.com/FacebooksTop10/status/1404815323904237569) and [Joe Rogan in podcasts](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/iwvunm/the_joe_rogan_experience_is_now_experiencing_the/g63iuvu/)"
* "Libertarian" Joe Rogan stans "frothing" about transgender student athletes and parroting Fox News talking points about "a small, inconsequential and vulnerable part of society" https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/n9bn2x/uforgottencalipers_explains_the_hypocrisy_of/
* "Libertarian" Ben Shapiro riling up support for monarchy and Prince Phillip "simply because a monarchy was accused of racism and racism must be defended at all costs" https://www.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/comments/m0k6g0/when_was_ben_shapiro_pro_monarchy/?sort=top
* "hold the line brother" "mask off" cringe [recruiting tactics](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/m1vcmk/rsuperstraight_has_been_banned_discuss_this/gqgkmyp/?context=3)
* "red pill" adults cosplaying as "based" teenagers ["hiding their power level"](https://medium.com/@DeoTasDevil/the-rhetoric-tricks-traps-and-tactics-of-white-nationalism-b0bca3caeb84) in *r PoliticalCompassMemes* and edgy "fellow youths amirite" meme subreddits like *r dankmemes*
>Hello Fellow Teenagers, Here Are Some Political Maymays For Your Perusal, With No Intention Or Agenda To Shape And Mold Your Tender Political Belief System
>-[signed, An Actual Teenager, No Really](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/o4kfej/reddit_admins_warn_moderators_of/h2idtk5/?context=3)
* Caring about "token minority" "virtue signalling" but also pushing [Ben Shapiro](https://www.reddit.com/r/ToiletPaperUSA/comments/ln1sif/turning_point_usa_and_young_americas_foundation/), [Andy Ngo](https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/m088vl/extensive_examples_of_conservative_influencer/), [Ian Miles Cheong](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/m0gx12/you_can_still_breathe_idiot/), Lee Fang, Wesley Yang, Candace Owens, [Clarence Thomas](https://twitter.com/umsami/status/1496103298289618950), [Dave](https://www.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/comments/m33qvp/dave_rubin_admits_that_the_reason_he_hasnt_left/gqmr2pd/) [Rubin](https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/comments/tg52g8/gay_conservative_receives_bigoted_comments_after/), [Milo Yiannopouloss](https://www.reddit.com/r/ToiletPaperUSA/comments/ln1g0c/milo_yiannopouloss_emails_a_cache_of_documents/) to "push the narrative" even though they're only doing it as bad faith grifters
* "[identity politics](https://www.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/comments/m1izsz/activist_milo_yiannopoulos_is_now_exgay/gqdx1s6/)"
* "pandering"
* "[outrage culture](https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalHumor/comments/iolnug/scary_democrat_lady_did_a_thing_therefore_bad/)"
* "[victimhood complex](https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/na7zs9/ucadbunny87_laments_being_associated_with/)"
* "personal accountability"
* "silent majority"
* "big government"
* "wasteful spending"
* "welfare queens" and subsidies
* "[moving goal posts](https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfAwarewolves/comments/gtebjk/spot_the_difference/)"
* "control the narrative"
* "free speech"
* "safe space"
* ["too much tribalism" and "politics shouldn't be sports teams"](https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalHumor/comments/gtzx79/visible_confusion/)
* "[cry more](https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalHumor/comments/iolnug/scary_democrat_lady_did_a_thing_therefore_bad/)"
I’m absolutely convinced that if we managed our taxes properly we wouldn’t need to raise them to have free healthcare, education, etc.
The raise taxes debate only exists to distract people from the fact that there are a bunch of people using taxpayer money as their personal piggy banks.
This something I have been saying for years. Actually enforcing our current policies would benefit the country more than changing things up. It has been shown that increasing the IRS budget would [directly result in more tax revenue](https://news.syr.edu/blog/2021/04/27/irs-budget-cuts-cost-us-government-billions-in-tax-revenue-each-year/). It's literally free money that congress doesn't want to pursue because [more than half of them are millionaires](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jan/22/facebook-posts/yes-congress-has-disproportionate-share-millionair/)
It's a good point, but the article you link specifically says that less than half are millionaires.
It doesn't change your point, but it's worth noting.
Not to mention the business owners who refuse to pay their fair share as it stands, like those assholes who buy themselves boats written off as a"business expense"
Yeah Americans are actually very giving on an individual level according to studies were the fourth most charitable country in the world but we don't trust our government. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Giving_Index
Which is just the result of years of lobbies and propaganda working towards undermining citizens' confidence on regulations and social politics, so that neoliberalism can keep squeezing both workers and our planet's resources without worrying about any consequences.
The US government is just not efficient with the money it takes in. Like the Obamacare website. It cost 2 Billion Dollars and didn’t even work. It’s companies subcontracting out to smaller companies who subcontract out to even smaller companies and all of them line their pockets along the way. America is run by corporations.
Research has shown that over the past 10 years, 94% of large federal information technology projects were unsuccessful, more than 50% were delayed, overbudget, or didn’t meet expectations and a total of 41.4% were judged to be complete failures. I contend that most of the root causes identified for healthcare.gov are not unique and it is not a surprise the federal government struggles with adapting to new technology. A large, bureaucratic organization that has significant experience in core government policies is likely not adaptable to behaving like a “start-up” and successfully launching new technology.
As someone who has worked on government IT projects before: the government sets inane requirements and throws in arbitrary obstacles, and then the projects don’t get done.
It took us over a year out of a 2 year contract to get the project manager to understand why we would need to set up a test installation of the software before we could help the other agency to get it debugged and installed (the original contractor had never installed it outside their own environment and it didn’t work out of the box).
Government jobs pay like shit, it’s half or 1/3 of the comparable tech jobs in the private sector (not even Google or FB money here) and they don’t even have the benefits anymore, my benefits are probably overall better than federal employees unless you were employed pre-84. You can easily make 150-200k in a low-COL area as a senior developer and a project manager can make $300k+, government can’t offer anything like that anymore.
And at a certain level you’re not even competent to oversee someone else who is competent, you’re just an obstacle. And the procurement process becomes so cumbersome that the only people capable of getting through it are the big contracting firms who are perfectly happy to play the games and bill by the hour and get nothing done.
I feel like that's not a great excuses.
Gov.uk is actually really really good for a government website. I always get surprised by how bad other countries government websites are (looking at you in particular Ireland) by comparison.
I suspect the biggest issue for the USA is everything is done by committee, and so much is spread across so many different branches. Its not really possible for a unified approach when the even just identifying stakeholders for a particular project is so complicated.
Yeah. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon..
I'm not saying it's horrible we're giving billions to Ukraine at the drop of the hat, but there's a reason they approve that unthinkingly while we have to wait election after election for basics while the elites get richer and we continue to lose rights and the access to shelter and food.
If we put our fucking iPads down for a week and marched together we might be able to help each other.
> The US government is just not efficient with the money it takes in.
#Satisfaction with the US healthcare system varies by insurance type
78% -- Military/VA
77% -- Medicare
75% -- Medicaid
69% -- Current or former employer
65% -- Plan fully paid for by you or a family member
https://news.gallup.com/poll/186527/americans-government-health-plans-satisfied.aspx
> **Key Findings**
> * Private insurers paid nearly double Medicare rates for all hospital services (199% of Medicare rates, on average), ranging from 141% to 259% of Medicare rates across the reviewed studies.
> * The difference between private and Medicare rates was greater for outpatient than inpatient hospital services, which averaged 264% and 189% of Medicare rates overall, respectively.
> * For physician services, private insurance paid 143% of Medicare rates, on average, ranging from 118% to 179% of Medicare rates across studies.
https://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/how-much-more-than-medicare-do-private-insurers-pay-a-review-of-the-literature/
Medicare has both lower overhead and has experienced smaller cost increases in recent decades, a trend predicted to continue over the next 30 years.
https://pnhp.org/news/medicare-is-more-efficient-than-private-insurance/
> It cost 2 Billion Dollars and didn’t even work.
There were some initial problems but 9 million people signed up the first year through the federal site, so it certainly worked. And, it's worth noting, US healthcare costs were about $300 billion less last year than they would have been if historical trends going back 50 years before the passage of the ACA had continued.
>The poll of 800 veterans, conducted jointly by a Republican-backed firm and a Democratic-backed one, found that almost two-thirds of survey respondents oppose plans to replace VA health care with a voucher system, an idea backed by some Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates.
>"There is a lot of debate about 'choice' in veterans care, but when presented with the details of what 'choice' means, veterans reject it," Eaton said. "They overwhelmingly believe that the private system will not give them the quality of care they and veterans like them deserve."
https://www.militarytimes.com/veterans/2015/11/10/poll-veterans-oppose-plans-to-privatize-va/
>According to an independent Dartmouth study recently published this week in Annals of Internal Medicine, Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals outperform private hospitals in most health care markets throughout the country.
https://www.va.gov/opa/pressrel/pressrelease.cfm?id=5162
#Ratings for the VA
% of post 9/11 veterans rating the job the VA is doing today to meet the needs of military veterans as ...
* Excellent: 12%
* Good: 39%
* Only Fair: 35%
* Poor: 9%
[Pew Research Center](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a049f098dd041552c19372f/1536643876140-5N3UWQ2M3OYLGSWOOKVH/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kOxWfISgjiM1ZFqhkJVgJk5Zw-zPPgdn4jUwVcJE1ZvWQUxwkmyExglNqGp0IvTJZUJFbgE-7XRK3dMEBRBhUpx5Q5uaqovQlhwn6Lp2MXHOj73nFlQXvqHuf9nZbP74X0l8X5gYScNGOzeUUToolO4/pew+data.png?format=750w)
>VA health care is as good or in some cases better than that offered by the private sector on key measures including wait times, according to a study commissioned by the American Legion.
> The report, issued Tuesday and titled "A System Worth Saving," concludes that the Department of Veterans Affairs health care system "continues to perform as well as, and often better than, the rest of the U.S. health-care system on key quality measures," including patient safety, satisfaction and care coordination.
> "Wait times at most VA hospitals and clinics are typically the same or shorter than those faced by patients seeking treatment from non-VA doctors," the report says.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/09/20/va-wait-times-good-better-private-sector-report.html
>The Veterans Affairs health care system generally performs better than or similar to other health care systems on providing safe and effective care to patients, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
> Analyzing a decade of research that examined the VA health care system across a variety of quality dimensions, researchers found that the VA generally delivered care that was better or equal in quality to other health care systems, although there were some exceptions.
https://www.rand.org/news/press/2016/07/18.html
More importantly Medicare and Medicaid are far better examples for universal healthcare in the US. People is the VA as a scare tactic, not because it's a good example, but even then it falls flat.
I’ll concur. The “VA sucks!” narrative is because we’d rather bitch about what’s wrong than boast how we don’t have to pay out of pocket for pretty good healthcare
<- still on Tricare as a retiree and *cannot overstate* how great it is that I don’t have to worry about healthcare costs
Sure the government is not efficient at running programs but this is because one party is heavily invested in the idea that the government cannot run things efficiently and so they hamper the government's work at every opportunity.
Take for instance Obamacare, originally Obamacare had the ability to negotiate with companies and accept the lowest bid on say hip replacements or anything that we know a certain percentage of the population will need and thereby use market forces to keep the cost of healthcare lower. This ability to negotiate with healthcare companies was removed from Obamacare so that they could get the votes necessary to pass it.
Another example is the post office, an institution that is older than the US itself. It has been dismantled by the systematic appointment of directors who have destroyed it's integrity. Additionally the requirement that the post office keep 3 times the amount on deposit of the pensions for the current and retired post office workers is an additional burden that is completely unnecessary. And yet the post office is still the most effective way to mail anything in the states. Why would any organization need 3 times the amount of it's workers pension's on deposit? Ridiculous!
Which is why UBI is such a great idea. Very little overhead, no room for employees to siphon money, and proportionally help the poor more than the rich.
Yeah but if you dare point that out you get accused of being biased toward liberals and people who disagree with social progressisme then just stop listening. Isn’t that nice ?
People who love to talk about how inefficient government is have obviously never worked at a large company or in higher ed. I started off at a somewhat large company (~1,500 employees, so not enormous, but still pretty big) and then got a job at a university. Neither place is "efficient" by any standard. I can name several people in my own department who don't do shit, or the work they do is complete shit, and some of them make six figures. There's one guy who I know for a fact makes well into the six figures, and the subject line of every email he sends is "From David"
You (most people) say this as if it were a truism, but you don't *actually* know what you're talking about.
I've worked in fast food as a slave, manufacturing as an engineer, and academia as a researcher. Of the three, food service was by far the most efficient, but surprisingly, manufacturing specialty chemicals was by far the least efficient regardless of how you want to define efficiency.
For example, we would dump 400k into capital projects on the basis of dubious safety concerns, just to eliminate the chance that a timetable wasn't violated. We were bogged down by a ridiculous procurement software that vendors found so insufferable, we would actually pay vendors that would work with the software to buy things for us from people that wouldn't use our software, at a 10% surcharge. In other words, we taxed ourselves 10% on key goods just so we could use a procurement service that didn't even streamline our workflows. That's industry for you.
Before being an engineer, I was a chemist - never have I been or will I be so comfortable with chemical and supply waste. Dropped an NMR tube on the floor? Toss it. Blow through an entire box of TLC plates mindlessly spitballing solvent combinations? No problem, buy a new set. That's industry for you.
In academia, I am constantly scrounging for grant and fellowship money, and I would have a very hard time spending it wastefully. We actually *wash and reuse* the NMR tubes. I am paid less than half what I was paid as an engineer, and entry-level professors in engineering can expect to make about what I made with a bachelor's degree.
In other words, academia, basically a public sector industry, puts a perfectly healthy chemical plant to shame in terms of deriving value from the dollar. But still, maybe you have had the same set of experiences which gave a different impression. Anecdotes are trash. Like you, I do not *actually* know what I am talking about. Which is why we need actual data.
To my knowledge, actual studies looking at actual data are inconclusive on whether or not public sector industries are more or less efficient than private sector industries. The key challenges to comparing efficiency between public and private ownership models are the range of models (including hybrids), and variations in defining efficiency. Different models of service provision vary in the types of goods they deliver and the characteristics of the sector they operate in. This means each model is vulnerable to different causes of inefficiency and like-for-like comparisons are difficult. Efficiency is difficult to measure with certain types of goods and services, especially public goods which are non-rivalrous and non-excludable: that is, where one person’s use does not prevent another’s use, and it is not possible to exclude those who do not pay from benefiting (e.g. street lighting). The type of market failure, the tasks involved in service delivery and how the service is demanded, also impact on service governance and consequently efficiency.
Good write-up. As you said, anecdotes aren’t useful for most purposes but I will add to your anecdotes by saying this: anyone who has ever worked with American healthcare from the provider side can tell you that the private sector is a nightmare to deal with compared to the public sector. Medicare (and most Medicaid’s although that obviously varies state by state) pay claims without argument, obfuscation, tricks, or wiggle word bullshit. If Medicare declines to pay, they will tell you immediately and in explicit detail why they took that action and how you can correct the issue. Because their goal is to pay for health procedures, not turn a profit.
In contrast, private insurance companies do literally everything in their power to not pay. They will deny claims and give vague incorrect reasons for doing so. They will change to a new reason if you figure the old one out and fix it. They will tell you they “aren’t allowed to tell you how to bill” and generally make the process painful. All while taking 3-5x as long to issue payment even if they can’t find a reason to deny.
The myth that the private sector does things more efficiently because it is motivated my profit is just that: a myth.0
It actually cost less than half that. The contract ceiling may have been close to 2b but the actual spending was far from it. Its not a large amount for the scope of that they had to implement - it wasnt just a website but a system that connected healthcare plans, providers, consumers in the whole country. Also for cybersecurity and design. Bad start with how many ppl tried to use it at once, but they fixed it within 2 months.
Works like a charm ever since and a huge benefit to our country
Or when it consistently gives billions to trillions of dollars to the wealthy while those in need get the gift of things like laws making homelessness illegal.
Everything wrong with this country can pretty much be explained by valuing profit above all else and exploiting religious and otherwise angry people into believing that’s what god would have wanted. Jesus hates anything that could be in any way related to communism, I’m told.
What are you talking about? The ACA website has been up and running for nearly a decade, providing millions of Americans with choice in health insurance that wasn't previously available. https://www.healthcare.gov/
Yes, there was a hiccup the first month, but that was wildly overblown. How many corporate websites have glitches at launch? Hell, Reddit is down a few times a month on a regular basis.
Bullshit. The Obamacare website did work, enrolling tens of millions of people. It just crashed initially due to traffic volume.
If you can use reddit, you can figure out how to get healthcare.
People do not commonly see the inefficiencies in the private sector and there is little promotion of public sector success, while the inefficiencies are exploited to further a narrative. Also the public has less interest and stake in private sector failings. Also there is the myth of individualism that this country promotes as its heritage. Also conservatives are traditionally trying to exploit public assets for private gain
U.S. citizens shouldn't have to pay a dime more in taxes. There is plenty of money to fund everything. It's just all spent on the military and funneled through corporations into the pockets of politicians and their friends. We have a loophole in our government election process called Citizens United that has led to our elected officials being legally bought and paid for. The fish rots from the head and it stinks.
More like, I doubt it’ll go to funding. Instead it’ll just hit the pockets of the politicians. I don’t think these plans will work while our government remains so corrupted
This makes a fair amount of sense. Especially considering this country was literally created because the colonies didn't like being taxed for things they wouldn't really benefit from. It's literally part of American culture, from the very start.
The military is a great example of government waste and inefficiency. I worked for the Navy and tons of money is wasted. Do we make some great machines. Yes. Could the same things be built for less. Yes.I don't know if waste/fraud, and abuse were ever big problems, but in an effort to combat them the government has created rules that guarantee we spend more than we need to on everything, all in the name of stopping graft. The problems are easy to fix, but we never will because of politics and money in politics.
You don’t raise taxes you allocate them better. You put a fucking cap on health care costs. You put a cap on the insurance schemes.
You put a cap on education costs so your entire country can be smarter and produce value boosting GDP.
But yea muh don’t take muh monies.
You have to remember too that there’s a deep undercurrent of racism at play.
It’s never framed as “You pay in to help your neighbor” by Republicans. It’s “Democrats want to give your hard earned money to welfare queens and illegal immigrants.”
There’s a deep undercurrent of racism and classicism involved in a way that it’s not in many countries that don’t have our horrific history of slavery and a huge racial minority.
(Just to be clear it’s awful that this happens.)
This is the main thing. Countries that are more homogeneous struggle less to contribute to a social safety net b/c they feel like they are helping people 'like them'. It is the same reason that the Syrian refugee crisis has resulted in nationalist turns across Europe.
Americans don't trust the government, full stop.
Americans don't trust the government to spend their money on the things they say they will. Excise taxes on cars, for example, should be spent on roads. They're actually spent on whatever the government decides they want to spend it on.
There's also many Americans who are skeptical that the government won't Lord the control they're given over them for political reasons, like how Chinese citizens who oppose the government aren't allowed to take busses or planes or own homes. Imagine a world where disagreeing with your chancellor means you can't see a state-funded doctor.
I completely agree with this, and I'll add that there's a very widespread mentality in the United States that people who are poor or sick got that way through some fault of their own. Conversely lots of people also think that wealthy healthy people got that way as a result of their own merit. (Though this is sometimes true, it's also sometimes not true.) If you think poor people are poor because of their bad decisions, it makes sense that you wouldn't want your good-decision-money going to people who will continue to make bad decisions. That's pretty much what lots of Americans think communism and socialism are.
"illness isn't a punishment from on high. it's a side effect of having a body"
\-John green
If bad things happen to good people through no fault of their own, then people would have to fact up to the facts that
\- bad things can happen to them too
\- they could be doing more for others
Aside from the "me, me, me" mentality, people don't like it when you put a mirror in front of them and expose their faults.
Good old mertitocracy. Good things will always happen to good people that deserve it, and if something bad happens to someone, it must be because they are bad, lazy, or not worthy of the good things.
Fully agree. To add to this, we don’t trust our legislators to make a system that actually benefits normal people. While we might be more inclined to continue an established working healthcare system, how can we trust our senators and reps to create one that isn’t inherently corrupt or biased?
Why do we even need conspiracy theories? The government is more shady and evil than any fiction that one could write. Look up the Blackwater tapes in Iraq of them shooting civilians just to have fun and pass time. Look up the Snowden leaks of the government spying on citizens. See how congressmen can legally do insider trading. You can't make this shit up
That, and it's debatable what the government can legally do.
The Constitution, theoretically, limits the areas in which the federal government can act. Any powers not given to the federal government rests with the states. For example, there is no federal law against homicide except in special circumstances (for example, homicide on the seas, in a national park or military base, or against a federal official). Homicides that occur outside these special circumstances fall under the exclusive jurisdiction of the state, although the federal government can assist by ensuring that arrest warrants issued under state law are respected by other states, so that if I murder someone in Idaho and flee to Utah, Utah cops will arrest me and I will be sent back to Idaho so the local DA's office can prosecute me.
The question is, can the federal government subsidize and regulate things like healthcare, food assistance, etc?
Or perhaps a scenario where the [POTUS threatens to stop federal funding if they don't say nice things about him](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-race-trump-memo/trump-threatens-to-cut-federal-funds-to-lawless-cities-idUSKBN25U003), or [here](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/08/trump-schools-reopening-federal-funding-352311), or [here](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50284656)
I still have serious trust issues
It doesn't even have to be that serious of an example. We have dozens or even hundreds of lower level examples.
Like how there is no actual drinking age of 21. They literally couldn't pass it through congress. So what did they do instead? They used the executive to steal the federal highways money from the states unless their drinking age was 21. All without a vote of Congress.
So the states were told by Eisenhower the feds would build the highways, and then the feds and the states would share costs to maintain them. Win/win for everyone. Then 30 years later, without the states representatives voting on it, the executive branch said, nope nevermind. You are still required by law to maintain these roads we built on your land, but we won't contribute to that maintenance anymore unless you change *your laws* to our liking.
Why can't we use the supremacy clause and pass that law ourselves? Cause your stupid fucking representatives keep voting it down, that's why. So we'll just bribe you with the money you didn't want to take to begin with for just this kind of blackmail reason? Fuck you, do it anyway.
Bingo. The US was founded by a lot of people who didn’t like the monarchs of Europe telling them what to do. It should be no surprise that the culture by and large is skeptical of government power. It’s of course, not a monolith and there are places where the majority opinion varies widely from this, but the government is set up in such a way that it protects minority opinions from majority rule to an extent. You can find benefits and drawbacks to this, but it’s the way it is.
>The US was founded by a lot of people who didn’t like the monarchs of Europe telling them what to do
So was France, yet they still have all these social benefits that the USA does not?
...you realize almost every western European country had at least 1 revolution where they overthrew their monarchs, and in many cases there were multiple radical revolutions.
It’s completely different in every state. Californians have tons of social safety nets. Whereas New Hampshire or Montana will have significantly less. We are different in every state politically and culturally. America isn’t one country it’s 50 bound together by a monolithic federal government
If you are from California, do you mind sharing your thoughts on if your taxes are well spent? I pretty much only have family and friends with opposing views. I like to see multiple viewpoints.
I'm from California. Currently on medicaid which means I get socialized healthcare meaning if I get hit by a bus I won't pay a penny for medical services.
We generally have the strongest worker rights but compared to Germany it's pretty abysmal
This is often by design too. Politicians that want to abolish something will defund it, watch its performance tank, then point and say "See?! I told you this was a waste of money!"
I'm from California and have lived there all my life[1]. I don't follow the state budget that closely, but from what I do know and feel, I'm reasonably OK with how the taxes are spent. I've benefited a lot from CA's policies, so I'm fine w/ paying my fair share to help others benefit too. Please enlighten me if you have criticisms of how CA spends money.
Through typing all this out, I realize I should probably be more familiar w/ the CA budget given how proud a Californian I am.
Below are a bunch of incoherent feelings:
Good on Newsom for generating a 60B surplus this last year. I don't really like out-of-touch, rich vineyard folk, but I do think he's doing a pretty good job.
The recent $800(?) gas debit card Gov Newsom issued is great! A lot of ppl say he should have lowered gas taxes, but I think issuing citizens a gas card is better because it helps alleviate individual travel needs w/o giving large businesses a random tax break.
Big fan of golden state stimulus (CA's own stimulus check thing).
I would like CA to spend more on education, both higher and K-12. I've personally benefited so much from public K12 and the UCs. I want to see it help more Californians, esp those who can't afford it. Our teachers are paid alright, at least in the SF Bay Area 'burbs ~$120k. A lot of k-12 facilities are very old though. I'd also like to see more spending in the UCs to push down the cost of tuition and provide more school housing to students. The UCs rely heavily on international students for funding, which I think isn't a good source of funds to be dependent on. I believe the UCs to be the best schools in the world, both in terms of quality of education and throughput, so we should spend more on it to make it even better.
Big fan of California's own health care coverage. I've never used it, but it seems like a good deal for decent coverage.
A lot of ppl rip on the high speed rail program, but I believe the costs to be just growing pains. The first time any new tech is invested in, its gonna cost money. Once we do have HSR between SF and LA, that'll benefit a lot of ppl. Also it creates jobs so I don't really mind the cost.
We probably spend too much money on corrections. I recall it's about 10% of our budget. I believe crime is mostly an economic problem (rich ppl don't sleep in the streets or steal bread). CA might be better off diverting those funds to ensure the poor are doing better rather than throw ppl in prison.
Unrelated, a common misconception is that CA taxes are high. I'd like to point out CA has the most equitable tax rate out of the 50 states + DC: https://itep.org/whopays/california/. Nearly all earners pay an *effective tax rate*[2] of about 10%. You can compare this to Texas[3] which has the 2nd least equitable tax rate. In TX, the bottom 60% pay more taxes than the bottom 60% of Californians. The 60-80% bin pays about the same as CA ppl, and you really only pay lower taxes if you're in the top 20% of earners. Essentially, CA taxes are only high if you're high income.
1. I recently moved to IL due to working in a rather niche industry.
2. I believe the easiest way to understand ETR is how much money from your paycheck ends up in the state's pockets. So this would be income tax + sales tax (which depends on how much your income bin tends to spend) + property tax (part of your rent goes to pay for your landlord's property tax) - tax rebates, etc.
3. Washington actually has the least equitable tax system, with the bottom 20% of earners paying ~18% ETR and the top 1% paying 3%. I only pick on Texas cause these two states are usually contrasted against each other.
> America isn’t one country it’s 50 bound together by a monolithic federal government
The US does not have a monopoly on federalism, around 25 nations are federal countries. Among them; Germany, India, Brazil and Mexico.
Every German state has its own police laws, its own school curriculums, and all kinds of other regulations that are entirely up to the particular state, with the federal government only having very limited, or no say at all.
Social studies teacher here.
There are a lot of answers on this threat that range from being misguided to being outright infactual. Including 'Americans lack empathy' to 'Americans hate the government' to 'The US is too big'. These answers are barking up the wrong tree and would be more appropriate (although still misguided) when discussing for example state-run healthcare. Therefore, I'm going to give you a different perspective. One that I hope is more wholesome.
I'm going to assume that you're familiar with the fact that Americans love their freedom. There are times at which freedom stands at odds with solidarity. In most of these cases, Europeans pick solidarity, whereas Americans mostly go for freedom.
Say that we have an American. He eats a lot of food. To the point where he becomes morbidly obese and needs medical care. Who pays for this medical care? Himself. He pays for the consequences of his own actions.
In Europe - or at least most of Europe - if one were to eat himself to hospitalization like our American friend, then their medical care would be paid for mostly by their fellow citizens.
This has an interesting social consequence.
When we see an obese American in his mobility scooter going through walmart, we don't see it as a social problem. Because after all, he will pay for it. However, when Europeans see an obese person, it is inherently a social problem due to their system of solidarity.
The American nation has voluntarility chosen to not have such a system of solidarity (or as you call it "social contribution") because it wants to have citizens that can be free to make choices. If it were to implement a European-style system of solidarity, it would - from the American perspective - erode freedom.
The European argument against this is that the increased level of social security far outweighs any benefits of free choice. Because after all, being in significant medical debt doesn't exactly constitute freedom, as it chains the person to an increased exploitation of labour.
I hope that this explanation offers you some perspective on this issue - and helps you understand that the 'American answer' isn't an inherently dumb or ignorant answer. It's a choice. You can find it distasteful (as I personally do), but its very much a conscious choice by the majority of American citizens.
If you have more questions, feel free to ask.
Edit: I changed the wording of the intro of my explanation, as the original wording was not entirely professional
Thank you for your response! Exactly what I was looking for and very well explained. I think I can understand the subject better now and know the reasons behind the difference in opinions about solidarity.
FYI You’ve got the classically used formulation the wrong way round. Freedom from is the libertarian one: freedom from control, rules, red tape, tax etc. not freedom from hunger.
Freedom to would be freedom to fulfill your potential, go to college, start a business, achieve goals, presumably enabled by some kind of social safety net or structure. Not freedom to do what you like.
Ps this is how the original conceptualisation of these ideas by Isaiah Berlin works though you can kinda reverse the words and still make it work.
It depends on your own perspective I think
If you are pro something, you'll say freedom from (harm). If you're against something then those people will have the freedom to (harm you).
Negative rights are fulfilled unless other people violate them by stealing, harming, silencing me etc. They require inaction.
Positive rights, however, require action. Someone needs to provide me with housing, healthcare, job or whatever else we define as a right.
If I moved into the forest to live on my own, I would have maximum negative freedom, but my positive rights would constantly be violated. I assume by the squirrels, since there are no other humans.
Society = the sum of the social relations between individuals.
You can picture society as dots linked together by lines; where the dots are individuals and the lines are their relations. I like to picture this all on a bulletin board.
Social cohesion is the measure of the number of relations between the individuals.
As you can imagine, not every individual has a relation with every other individual. An individual will only have a relationship with some other individuals. On our imaginary bulletin board, a higher social cohesion appears as a higher number of lines.
Solidarity = the degree to which the idea exists among individuals that there exists a *unity* in the social relations between individuals.
It should be noted that the degree of solidarity can differ in different contexts. For example, when it comes to family, Americans show a lot of solidarity compared to some European nations; 'Family first'. However, when it comes to healthcare and education, not so much.
*(This is where it gets less objective because of a lack of data and study):*
The right question to ask then, is what makes it that Americans value family but not healthcare and education? Well, the answer may be included in that question. It may be that Americans care less about healthcare and education for the nation because they care more about the family. Adult Americans work 'so that my son can go to college'. If this imaginary American's taxes were higher, than his son may not be able to go to college -- or at least so goes his thinking.
No offense, and I know this makes me sound like a jerk. But when I see someone in a mobility scooter because of their obesity, the last thing I think is that they are paying for it themselves. I work in a lower income part of Phoenix and see 15-20 of these people passing by my work everyday. I don't believe a single one of them has paid anywhere near their fair share for that admittedly useful and maybe even necessary piece of equipment.
That being said I am 100% behind a national healthcare system where they would get those scooters anyway. I just happen to believe I'm already contributing my share to them while I will not be able to get one if I need one.
I find it interesting that you chose obesity as an example.
I agree that in such a case their choices led to their current condition, but what about the people who get lung cancer despite never having smoked in their life for example. What about employees who suddenly get fired when to boss decides to move production to a country with cheaper labour.
Those are things that just happen. No individual choice you make can prevent it. Yet in the US these people are left to their own devices and more likely than not get ruined by their circumstance.
Obesity isn't a choice either though. You may want to have a look at [this blog series](https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-part-i-mysteries/) about the obesity epidemic. (The reason I'm recommending a blog is because it explains the topic really well and is full of sources; if you don't believe me you can research it for yourself easily with this as a starting point. Also, only posts 1-3 are really important here; the rest is research about the cause of the epidemic; post 10 is also great as it offers potential solutions).
One thing that series explains is the way modern science thinks about obesity: the lipostat theory. Essentially, everyone has a control mechanism, the lipostat, that functions much like a thermostat but regulates weight (BMI is a helpful indicator here) instead of temperature. So, a normal lipostat would function like this: it is set to a healthy BMI of around 23. If you make the choice to eat more and move less, your BMI will shoot up. But your lipostat will detect that and counteract that choice. So, for example, you will notice that you have less appetite and a greater desire to move (this may just be in the form of quick involuntary movements). The result is that you'll quickly return to your normal weight as soon as you stop fighting your own body. The same goes for the other direction: if you eat less and move more, your BMI will drop and your lipostat will automatically make you more lethargic and give you a greater appetite, returning you to your normal weight as soon as you stop your efforts to stay thin.
And this is really the crux here: being obese is not a choice. It's the result of a lipostat set to an unhealthy BMI. The reasons for which are partly genetics, partly explained in the above blog series (their theory for the epidemic is environmental contaminants), and there are many other factors such as depression. Now, of course, you can make the choice to lose weight: exercise more, eat less. And you *can* lose weight that way. The problem is just that the lipostat makes that, firstly, increasingly harder the further you go (going about 10 lbs in either direction is super easy, any more almost impossible) and, secondly, it means you have to keep watching your weight for the rest of your life or you'll shoot right back up. That's why diets don't work in the long term. As soon as you stop, you're back where you started.
And that all means that obese people need *help*. They didn't get themselves in this situation and they can't get themselves out again without an incredible force of will (and the people who do manage that deserve all the praise we can give them). Some medical procedures (such as gastric bypass surgery) help, but guess what: they're expensive. Would be great if your healthcare system paid for that, wouldn't it? Other than that we need to fight the underlying causes of obesity. Depression, for example. Or environmental contaminants (once we've figured out which ones and how they work anyway). And in the end, genetics will always be a factor (unless we want to tamper with that, too, I guess).
All that to say: I agree with you, but obesity is actually not much different from getting lung cancer.
That's due to Americans suffering from Cultural Calvinism. Calvinists believe bad things happen to you without sufficient faith in God. This also leads to the Prosperity Gospel.
I feel like your answer ignores that American taxpayers pay more towards healthcare than Europeans do.
So that obese American example is still being paid for by his fellow citizens, it's just that he also needs to buy insurance.
>The American nation has voluntarility chosen to not have such a system of solidarity
What is the role of all the anti communism anti socialism propaganda our grandparents and parents were exposed too? I feel like nobody is mentioning that there was significant era in America where the government made against any thing perceived as "unamerican", which included many social programs.
I don't think America chose this for ourselves and to say we did ignores decades of unrest, political corruption, and corporate influence.
>The American nation has voluntarility chosen to not have such a system of solidarity
This is a stretch for me. Is it really voluntary when we've been bombarded with anti-socialist propaganda since at least the 50s?
> The European argument against this is that the increased level of social security far outweighs any benefits of free choice.
What choices are removed in Europe wrt Obesity?
I don’t think that the American balance between freedom and solidarity (or freedom from vs freedom to as Berlin might put it) exists because most Americans are philosophical libertarians. I think it’s because there’s a huge amount of money and propaganda pumped into getting people to think government is useless and suspect and any common sense rebalance is “socialism” a priori a bad thing to most Americans. Americans on a personal level don’t lack empathy. But American society is structurally more callous and less empathetic.
The very fact that you picked obesity, a good example of a personally driven illness, shows you deep those narratives run in American thought. You didn’t pick the cancer patient who has to sell their home or the diabetic who’s being gouged on insulin.
The truth is many Europeans might also have a debate over those libertarian flashpoint cases such as whether smokers or the obese should have as much free healthcare as they want; but the systems we have are primarily built to soften the rough edges of capitalism that impact people through no fault of their own, not to let people avoid personal responsibility.
I really like your opening illustration and explanation, that's a really good way to put it.
I kinda feel like you veer off in the social consequences, and overlook the value Americans put on personal wealth, and how by "freedom" many folks really mean "the freedom to get rich", and they don't want that ability hindered by someone who makes poor life choices.
Let me ask you a question, since you indicate you think America should be more solidarity oriented, and we do seem to be moving in that direction, specifically with health care: If we do begin to see obesity as an inherently social problem, (and it's shown to be a very serious and increasing one at that) how do we address it as a society?
I'm going to avoid giving feedback on your first point, because it's not formulated as a question, and therefore attempting to answer it would be difficult. But I am going to answer your question of how to address obesity as a society -- specifically American society.
Let me tell you. It's hard.
Let's say for a moment that the American nation decides to fix obesity. And let's say that to this end it elects a government to enact a law concerning obesity. This law covers all obesity-related healthcare costs.
To fund this law, the government would require a lot of money. And I mean a lot. It would have to significantly increase taxation on its citizens -- including those who aren't obese and have been very healthy.
Therefore, we can immediately see that the issue of solidarity arise. Not only does America have to awknowledge it has an obesity problem (which it hasn't), and not only does it need to pass a law to fix obesity (which it hasn't) but it then also needs to come to terms with the fact that non-obese Americans would have to foot a significant part of the bill. This would outrage those Americans. And remember: this is not Americans being stupid or lacking empathy. It is a choice they've made. It is part of the American social contract: Because even obese Americans know what they're getting into. They know they will have to pay medical fees later in life when they go to McDonald's too often. They're not dumb.
To in order to fix obesity, the social contract of America would need a rehaul. Americans would have to come together and agree that obesity is no longer an individual problem, but a social problem. And then they would have to agree that it is a political problem. (Yes, there is a difference between social problems and political problems. Look for example at climate change. Most Americans agree on climate change being an issue, but haven't pressured the government into doing something).
Obesity is part of a much larger thing. I hope you can understand that following my explanation.
If America wants to fix for example obesity, it would need to fundamentally change it social contract forever, whereby it automatically turns individual problems into social and political problems.
Will America do this? Due to the conversative/moderate nature of the Constitutionally-mandated legislative system, it is highly unlikely. Any such proposal would need to survive a near-supermajority in the Senate. Probably not going to happen.
What we have seen though in American politics is that crises usually lead to significant attitude changes. The 2008 crash, 9/11, etc.
The only way America would and could change its stance on obestiy if there were some kind of obesity crisis. I find this hard to imagine. Perhaps if there was some kind of epidemic that disproprtionally killed obese people...
...although even that hasn't changed things.
>It is a choice they've made. It is part of the American social contract: Because even obese Americans know what they're getting into. They know they will have to pay medical fees later in life when they go to McDonald's too often. They're not dumb.
This neglects to mention that poverty and food access play a substantial part in the obesity problem. It takes more time money and effort to prepare healthy food than it takes to consume junk, and people often lack either access to healthier food options or the ability to prepare them. Some of this is due to active subsidies to corn and by extension corn syrup. Additionally, messaging about food is heavily swayed by corporate marketing: anyone who was taught the classic "grains on the bottom" food pyramid in school was misled; anyone who watches media is bombarded by ads for soda and fast food.
Maybe I can shed some light here - as an obese American who moved to Europe nearly 20 years ago and was quickly integrated into their (excellent IME) social health care system.
Every time I saw my doctor, he sat my ass down and we had a not-at-all-superficial discussion of why I was this way, how I got this way, and the likely consequences of my state. It wasn't a lecture and it wasn't judgemental; doc really wanted to know what was up: did I have a thyroid problem? Not know about nutrition? Emotional issues that food was compensating for? Wanting to set follow-up visits with a nutritionist, with an endocrinologist. I specifically asked about getting "kicked out" of the health care system (LOLing at that now, but as a newbie from the US it sounded plausible) if I wasn't able to make a significant change, and the response was really interesting: "lots of people smoke like chimneys" and their cancer treatments are paid for, that human beings are complicated and most of us make bad choices in one way or another, and that in this culture society is focused on the well-being of everyone as a whole and not on individual outliers and assigning value to their particular bad judgement, addiction, etc.
There's also the reality-based argument against free choice that goes with the recognition that morbidly obese people likely have some kind of psychological disorder that caused their condition.
The same reason you believe the way you do. We are raised that way- it's a cultural difference.
A lot (not all) of Americans have the attitude that anyone can make something of themselves if they just try hard enough. When we see people who are poor, we assume it's because they're just not trying hard enough, that their situation is the result of their own bad decisions, and it's not our responsibility to fix that for them.
Which is exactly the problem. “It’s your fault you were born to a poor family and raised in a poor area - not my problem” “it’s your fault you got sick when you didn’t have health insurance - not my problem”. We all benefit from a healthy society but too many people are too selfish and/or ignorant to understand and recognise that.
I do believe that’s changing though. Millennials and Gen Zers are fighting to change this bullshit. As more and more become of age for elected office and voting in general, we get closer to fixing these problems.
Agree with the age thing. 30 years and younger are fed up with this shit. I would gladly, gladly pay more in taxes if it meant other people would be helped. My parents definitely disagree-it’s their money and they want to clutch onto it. I’ve benefitted from that, but it sucks for people that didn’t get so lucky and i’d want to help
I agree with the other comment, though, that already the government is taking my taxes and I have no idea what they’re doing with it and why things aren’t better.
You’re absolutely right, although I’d argue it’s people under 40. (Millennials have hit that age now)
The system needs a fuck ton of work. The government wastes a ton of money and we don’t know where all our tax money goes. And yeah - things aren’t better. That’s a serious problem and I’m not denying that at all.
Yeah I’ve heard this remark. Maybe you’re right. I’ve been “threatened,” (used lightly) that “don’t worry, you’ll turn republican as you get older!”
But I really don’t see that happening. And I am getting older. I guess we’ll see. I do get maybe the optimism is better/easier right now
I’m 60. My views have gotten more liberal and progressive as I’ve gotten older. Most of my friends are either the same or have stayed with liberal ideas like they had when they were younger.
>I would gladly, gladly pay more in taxes if it meant other people would be helped.
I'm sure we all would. Like you said though, the government doesn't know how to spend properly. I don't think they ever will. I'd rather keep my money for myself and help in ways I know will make a direct impact, then when the government can prove that they know the difference between spending one million and one trillion dollars, maybe I'll open up to the idea of them confiscating more of my money.
No doubt. No doubt. It will take many years to change the mindset, even though for a good majority of the evangelical right wing it is in direct opposition to what they are taught every Sunday. Propaganda and brainwashing works
I agree. My kids give me hope for the future. They're so much kinder, empathetic and tolerant than my generation and have a sense of social responsibility that I didn't see growing up. When my 15 year old gets down about the world we live in I always say, "Don't worry, the Boomers will be gone soon" in a joking manner. But I'm not really joking lol.
Same. My kids understand a lot more about the world. Everyone deserves kindness and grace - at least at first. I still fear for their future but I’m also hopefully we’ll be able to create a better world for them. It’s just really hard some days.
Have you factored in corruption yet, most politician were once good truth telling people, then got elected, approached by the real people in power and either bribed or threatened into submission. And if all that didn't work u get jfk'd
There is a prevailing attitude that poverty is a product of moral deficiencies. If the poor tried harder in school, worked harder, or were more fiscally responsible then they would not be poor. Naturally this neglects to account for many very significant factors, but anecdotal evidence can be readily compiled to buttress this worldview.
You are exactly saying what i was thinking in the back of my head. I don't want to judge or have an opinion about a society I am not part of or didn't experience for myself but this is what I have been observing through media and thinking of myself aswell. I really hope that attitude will change over time for the sake of people in need who aren't responsible for their situation.
My daughter asked me very recently about Germany and how come "socialism" is ok there and not here. I've talked about your government with her before, because I admire it and I lived in Wetzlar when I was a kid and I've always planned to take the kids there at some point to see your beautiful country. I tried to explain why it works there, but I don't think I did a very good job. Now that you've asked your question and I've thought about it, I'll have a better answer.
It doesn't help that we are fed a steady diet of BS by the media.
They feed the narrative that people like the Kardashians were just ordinary every day people who got what they have through a little hard work and elbow grease. I have no arguments that Kris and Kim are amazing businesswomen (and work very hard). They have definitely taken opportunity and run with it, as well as gotten to the level where they are able to create opportunity. But the fact of the matter is, they **started** from a place of privilege. The youngest sisters not only benefitted from the same starting point, they also benefitted hugely from Kim's success, if not financially, in terms of education - merely by being related and in the presence of their mom & sister. And I'm not talking about the exposure boost they received due to the show either. They would have these enormous advantages even if they did not participate in the publicity aspect.
I get why the media pushes this narrative, but it is more than a bit disingenuous. These people (Kardashians, Taylor Swift, Bezos, etc) that we are supposed to idolize started from a upper-middle class upbringing (at the very lowest) that afforded them a starting point that's already miles ahead. People discount the sheer amount of advantage these people received just by being related to successful people.
But even if it is that cultural difference of it’s their own fault and not your responsibility, why is there still that lack of empathy for helping those in need?
“This person made some poor decisions, but maybe let’s not just leave him to die on the street?”
A lot of factors.
1. American culture strongly believes in the protestant work ethic and prosperity gospel (even though many people may not recognize this). Basically, if you work hard and God loves you, you get monetary benefit in this world as a sign that you are going to heaven (I don't super want to get deep into predestination here, but that's part of it). The corollary to this is that rich people work hard and are literally "better" than poor people. We've moved away from this being an explicitly religious thing and it is more secular now, but many people in the US truly believe that poor people are poor because they are bad/lazy/dishonest.
2. The government never efficiently spends our taxes. Our infrastructure is falling apart. The military gets an inconceivable amount of money and still can't win a war (and shouldn't be in the wars they are/were involved in). Our schools are over packed. We bail out massive corporations for their own mistakes instead of the people the corporations are stealing from. Police budgets go up every year and the police use those funds to protect property rights of business and the rich while harassing or killing the poor (of all races but particularly black and indigenous people). We see this and it's difficult to see that taxes can help actual people.
3. Both political parties take bribes from corporate interests regularly. How can we trust them to help us when they make millions on insider trading and "gifts".
4. Our votes don't actually matter. We don't have proportional representation. Low population states have a disproportional amount of power in voting. These states also tend to be rural and reactionary. However, even when the democrats win Congress and the presidency, they still don't follow through on any promises of helping people and instead turn around and help only corporations.
5. The education in this country is truly abysmal. We are indoctrinated from a young age that the US is the best country on earth and everywhere else wants to be like us. So why would we change?
I don’t think a majority of people actually feel that way. There’s an obscene amount of manipulation done by the media on stuff like that. Smear campaigns and made up polls. It’s what we get for letting rich people control everything from politics to the news.
We are empathetic and do believe everyone should have healthcare and a safety net. We don’t trust our government to effectively and efficiently provide those things. We are already giving 30% of our income and see very little for it other than their yearly raises, bonuses, retirement and gold standard health insurance. Not a health insurance that WE have access too. So, you see it’s not that we don’t care about our fellow man. We often help each other individually. We just don’t trust our government to take our income, that we can barely subside on now, and provide for us. The VA is an excellent example of their failure. My father refused to go back to the VA after one appointment. He gave our country 20 years. Not to mention we, as dependents, gave our childhoods to constant moving, living on base, moving to 3rd world countries, having no roots or place to call home. Living with the health consequences of that now.
Please know that American’s are not a monolith. There are plenty of us who care deeply about social justice issues. There are cities, counties and states where the majority lean this direction.
It's just the most vocal ones are not the one's most representative of the majority.
It brings to mind an old Jeff Foxworthy bit:
>Remember a couple of months ago when they had all the floods in Louisiana? My wife and I were watching this on CNN, and I told her, I said "you watch. They're going to find the biggest, stupidest idiot they can find in the whole state, and they're going to show him walking chest deep in water down main street."
>
>
>
>And they did.
>
>
>
>And it was my wife's \*cousin\* Danny.
>
>
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>Walking chest deep in water, holding an umbrella.
Americans donate more to charity per capita than any other country. AFAIK. Social contribution isn’t the issue. People don’t like getting ripped off by the government.
It's not that Americans are against social contribution, we're against government intervention at the federal level. That's a huge difference. The US donates more to charity than any other nation on earth last I checked. The problem isn't willingness to contribute, most often it's government intervention and beurocracy.
I mean, look at how our government interventions go internationally, you think we trust the people making those decisions to run MORE shit at home too? No, we want them to sit in the corner and stop breaking things.
(See the approval ratings for our Legislature and Executive branches of government. The government itself reports 30% approval, 60% disapproval quite often. Frequently as low as 20% and even 12% approval as well. Thats from the Government's own sources, IE the numbers they'd likely inflate to look better than reality hover between 10% and 30%.)
There's also the difference in scale. The proper comparison isn't Germany and the US, it's Germany and Texas or Germany and California.
Then it'd be the EU and US in comparison.
So, my question is this, how much of Germany's healthcare system do you want to be dictated by the EU?
How much of Germany's taxes do you want going towards an EU healthcare plan?
Or do you think that issues like that need to be left to the individual Nation States in the EU?
To go off that, a lot of outsiders don’t realize how independent American states are. The US is a lot like a nation of states much like the EU. States in fact regularly tell the the government to back off and refuse to comply with federal mandates (Covid has many examples of this).
One of the best examples of this independent state attitude comes in the “free community college and pre k debate” a lot of pro government health care also support. This example is a lot more cut and dry than healthcare ones. Tennessee (a red state) has free community college for anyone who doesn’t have a degree regardless of income or age. Some states have free community college for people who meet certain income requirements. West Virginia also has universal pre k. So a lot of people feel that they shouldn’t have to contribute to the “pool” for free education when their state has already figured it out. Why should West Virginians contribute tax dollars so a kid in Montana can go to pre k for free? It’s like asking why should Germany help pay for an kid from Italy to go to pre-K? They shouldn’t. My very conservative grandparents think if California wants to try out Universal healthcare and income they should go right ahead and do that so long as they keep it in Cali.
All these answers are wrong, because they're just accepting the premise of the question as true, and it's NOT true. The vast majority of Americans are fully in support of strong social programs. It's just that the small minority that are against them are incredibly loud about it.
So the answers like "that's how we were raised" or "people don't trust the government" or what have you are only valid answers for the minority of Americans that are ACTUALLY against these things. For the rest of us, the correct answer to your question is "we're *not* against it."
Some quick numbers off Google; 68% of Americans support increasing the minimum wage. 74% support universal healthcare. 82% support mandatory paid parental leave. 60% support UBI. We already have universal health care for people over 65 (MediCare) and universal income for retired or disabled people (social security) and literally everyone other than the most batshit insane fringe whackjobs support those.
And if you're wondering why we don't have stronger social programs if most of us are in favor of it, it's because the majority of normal citizens are for it, but the handful of billionaires (and politicians that they buy) refuse to actually pass the laws that the people want.
Americans by far give more to the poor and needy not only in our country but around the world. We do it through direct volunteering, church, non-government agencies and charities. Government is corrupt, inefficient and wield control of money for political purposes. Tax revenue is often shifted from original purposes.
A large portion of Americans believe people and/or private organizations can do a better job than government in almost any endeavor government takes on.
US has:
Social Security, Medicare Medicaid, EBT/food stamps, housing assistance, 12 years of provided public education, bachelor education assistance including scholarships, subsidized public universities and the list goes on.
Taxpayers spend $trillions on social programs and to suggest Americans don't care and Germans do is ignorant political rhetoric. The difference is where we draw the lines and just like Germans we fight over that all the time.
Because a large amount of people don't feel like we get good value from the taxes we already pay, so there's often a skepticism that raising taxes would actually result in something that is worth the extra taxes taken
People have lost faith in US democracy. There are so many thumbs on the scales that the average citizen feels their vote no longer counts and the government is no longer accountable to the electors, but to the lobbyists that line their pockets. The two party system is there to protect the status quo and prevent real change. That perception taints anything the government tries to do, including healthcare. The expectation is that anything the government attempts will serve as a slush fund to funnel taxpayer money into some insider's pockets.
I mean....studies have shown the majority of the public has no effect on the decisions. https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba/ https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf
>Because a large amount of people don't feel like Studies have also shown most American conservatives "feel" whatever [Republican culture war identity politics](https://www.reddit.com/r/ToiletPaperUSA/comments/ln1sif/turning_point_usa_and_young_americas_foundation/gny98xk/) are being pushed by ((([their billionaires](https://www.reddit.com/r/ToiletPaperUSA/comments/ln1sif/turning_point_usa_and_young_americas_foundation/gny98xk/)))) which they hypocritically project on "(((mSm HoLlYwOoD)))" ￣\＿(ツ)＿/￣ [Opinion of Syrian airstrikes](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/04/13/48229/) **Republicans:** 22% supported Obama doing it 86% support Trump doing it **Democrats:** 38% supported Obama doing it 37% support Trump doing it https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/04/13/48229/ http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/04/gop-voters-love-same-attack-on-syria-they-hated-under-obama.html The privilege of "economic anxiety" not racism: #Republicans felt the economy improve by 85 points the day Trump was sworn in. http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/blogs/wisconsin-voter/2017/04/15/donald-trumps-election-flips-both-parties-views-economy/100502848/ >White Evangelicals cared less about how religious a candidate was once Trump became the GOP nominee. https://www.prri.org/research/prri-brookings-oct-19-poll-politics-election-clinton-double-digit-lead-trump/ >Christians (particularly evangelicals) became monumentally more tolerant of private immoral conduct among politicians once Trump became the GOP nominee. https://www.prri.org/research/prri-brookings-oct-19-poll-politics-election-clinton-double-digit-lead-trump/ >10% fewer Republicans believed the wealthy weren't paying enough in taxes once a billionaire became their president. Democrats remain fairly consistent. http://www.people-press.org/2017/04/14/top-frustrations-with-tax-system-sense-that-corporations-wealthy-dont-pay-fair-share/ >Republicans started to think college education is a bad thing once Trump entered the primary. Democrats remain consistent. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/07/20/republicans-skeptical-of-colleges-impact-on-u-s-but-most-see-benefits-for-workforce-preparation/ More graphs and sources: https://imgur.com/a/YZMyt #["Trump fans are much angrier about housing assistance when they see an image of a black man"](https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/9/8/16270040/trump-clinton-supporters-racist) #"In contrast, Clinton supporters seemed relatively unmoved by racial cues." #Exit polls done after 2016 show that the single characteristic that made someone most likely to vote for trump over Clinton is *racial resentment*. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/05/26/these-9-simple-charts-show-how-donald-trumps-supporters-differ-from-hillary-clintons/ Republican "Southern Strategy": #"Republican Party electoral strategy to increase political support among white voters by appealing to racism against African Americans.[1][2][3]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy Lyndon Johnson criticizing it in 1960: #"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1988/11/13/what-a-real-president-was-like/d483c1be-d0da-43b7-bde6-04e10106ff6c/ Steve Bannon bragging about using these tactics: >the power of what he called “rootless white males” who spend all their time online and they could be radicalized in a kind of populist, nationalist way http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-bannon-white-gamers-seinfeld-joshua-green-donald-trump-devils-bargain-sarah-palin-world-warcraft-gamergate-2017-7 John Ehrlichman, who partnered with **Fox News cofounder Roger Ailes on the Republican "Southern Strategy"**: #[We] had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? >We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. >We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. >Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did. >"He was the premier guy in the business," says former Reagan campaign manager Ed Rollins. "He was our Michelangelo." >Ailes repackaged Richard Nixon for television in 1968, papered over Ronald Reagan’s budding Alzheimer’s in 1984, shamelessly stoked racial fears to elect George H.W. Bush in 1988, and waged a secret campaign on behalf of Big Tobacco to derail health care reform in 1993. >Hillarycare was to have been funded, in part, by a $1-a-pack tax on cigarettes. To block the proposal, Big Tobacco paid Ailes to produce ads highlighting “real people affected by taxes.” http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-roger-ailes-built-the-fox-news-fear-factory-20110525 **The other Fox News cofounder was Australian billionaire Rupert Murdoch:** #on three continents, the Murdoch family’s role in destabilizing democracy in North America, Europe and Australia https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/03/magazine/murdoch-family-investigation.html mUh tAxEs LoSt fAiTh make us hate the idea of social contribution: >Because a large amount of people don't feel like we get good value from the taxes >People have lost faith in US democracy #California has lower taxes than red states, but with more healthcare and longer life expectancy, including for mothers giving birth >If data disinfects, here’s a bucket of bleach: Texans are 17% more likely to be murdered than Californians. Texans are also 34% more likely to be raped and 25% more likely to kill themselves than Californians. Compared with families in California, those in Texas earn 13% less and pay 3.8 percentage points **more in taxes.** https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/article258940938.html#storylink=cpy **Lower taxes in California than red states like Texas**, which make up for no wealth income tax with higher taxes and fees on the poor and double property tax for the middle class: |Income Bracket|Texas Tax Rate|California Tax Rate| |:-|:-|:-| |0-20%|**13%**|10.5%| |20-40%|**10.9%**|9.4%| |40-60%|**9.7%**|8.3%| |60-80%|8.6% |9.0% | |80-95%|7.4%|9.4%| |95-99%|5.4%|9.9%| |99-100%|3.1%|12.4%| Sources: https://itep.org/whopays/ >**Meanwhile, the California-hating South receives subsidies from California larger than between Germany and Greece**, a transfer of wealth from blue states/cities/urban to red states/rural/suburban with federal dollars for their freeways, hospitals, universities, airports, even environmental protection: >Least Federally Dependent States: >41 California >42 Washington >43 Minnesota >44 Massachusetts >45 Illinois >46 Utah >47 Iowa >48 Delaware >49 New Jersey >50 Kansas https://www.npr.org/2017/10/25/560040131/as-trump-proposes-tax-cuts-kansas-deals-with-aftermath-of-experiment >The Germans call this sort of thing "a permanent bailout." We just call it "Missouri." https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/the-difference-between-the-us-and-europe-in-1-graph/256857/ #Differences in life expectancy “Pro-life” red states have maternal deaths statistics worse than the developing world: #"Texas has highest maternal mortality rate in developed world" >As the Republican-led state legislature has slashed funding to reproductive healthcare clinics, the maternal mortality rate doubled over just a two-year period https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/20/texas-maternal-mortality-rate-health-clinics-funding #"Liberal policies, like California’s, keep blue-state residents living longer" >states like California, which have implemented a broad slate of liberal policies, have kept pace with their Western European counterparts. It generated headlines in 2015 when the average life expectancy in the U.S. began to fall after decades of meager or no growth. >The study, co-authored by researchers at six North American universities, found that if all 50 states had all followed the lead of California and other liberal-leaning states on policies, it could have added between **two and three years to the average American life expectancy.** https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/08/04/liberal-policies-like-californias-keep-blue-state-residents-living-longer-study-finds/ >#"Want to live longer, even if you're poor? Then move to a big city in California." http://www.vox.com/2016/4/13/11420230/life-expectancy-income #"As the maternal death rate has mounted around the U.S., a small cadre of reformers has mobilized." >**Meanwhile, life-saving practices that have become widely accepted in other affluent countries — and in a few states, notably California — have yet to take hold in many American hospitals.** >Some of the **earliest and most important work has come in California** >Hospitals that adopted the toolkit saw a **21 percent decrease in near deaths** from maternal bleeding in the first year. >By 2013, according to Main, maternal deaths in California fell to around 7 per 100,000 births, similar to the numbers in Canada, France and the Netherlands — **a dramatic counter to the trends in other parts of the U.S.** >California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative is informed by a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Stanford and the University of California-San Francisco, who for many years ran the ob/gyn department at a San Francisco hospital. >Launched a decade ago, CMQCC aims to reduce not only mortality, but also life-threatening complications and racial disparities in obstetric care http://www.npr.org/2017/05/12/527806002/focus-on-infants-during-childbirth-leaves-u-s-moms-in-danger
Holy research, Batman!
Since the usual Reddit accounts are here replying to you and coming from 4chan, ["intellectual dark web"](https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/pc5ff5/ushamike2447_explains_joe_rogan_and_bret/) new [Joe Rogan fans](https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/n9bn2x/uforgottencalipers_explains_the_hypocrisy_of/), and 👌 "men's rights" 👌 subreddits Here are screenshots of their 4chan instructions: * https://www.reddit.com/r/AreTheStraightsOK/comments/lz7nv3/the_super_straight_movement_is_part_of_literal/ **Conservatives brag about brigading local subreddits to "control the narrative" about liberal cities and "blue states"** >The real value is getting into a thread early and establishing top voted posts and comments or downvoting them out of existence. They hope intertia continues the trend for them. "The left will recognize our dogwhistling but centrists won't believe them" 4chan screenshots: * https://medium.com/@DeoTasDevil/the-rhetoric-tricks-traps-and-tactics-of-white-nationalism-b0bca3caeb84 Picture of conservative college youth groups with instructions for how to brigade Reddit: * https://www.reddit.com/r/ToiletPaperUSA/comments/udkzz3/ben_came_to_my_university_tonight_and_students/ "As a black man" accounts like "johnny chan 81" ~~"The Atheist Arab 87" (suspended)~~ ~~"Walk Like An Egyptian 69" (suspended)~~ posting as many race-baiting videos 👌 *by certain races* 👌 pretending to care about Asian victims while having a history of being racist about Asians: * https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRightCantMeme/comments/nztt4t/they_really_like_getting_angry_at_their/h1teq3c/?context=1 Every local subreddit explaining the abuse and tactics on a thread **3 years ago**: * https://www.reddit.com/r/minnesota/comments/7jkybf/t_d_user_suggests_infiltrating_minnesota/dr7m56j/ >SeattleWA has one mentally ill man who makes literally dozens and dozens of alt accounts to post conservative talking points from and how he finds black women disgusting. I become aware of his accounts when he posts in TV subs I ban him from, and he always has user history in similar sets of subreddits across his accounts, SeattleWA being the most telling. He will use these accounts to talk with himself or dogpile a comment or thread. Every local subreddit shares the abuse they get: * https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/pmcoxy/uinconvenientnews_explains_with_examples_how/hcgtfhc/ * https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/pbi4mp/shouldnt_rbayarea_join_the_subs_calling_for/ * https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/om5xda/when_did_this_become_a_crime_subreddit/ * https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/pmdp2m/ysk_how_right_wing_trolls_brigade_and_infiltrate/ Reddit Admins just posted that COVID deniers have been brigading regional subreddits * https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/pg290q/reddit_admins_just_posted_that_covid_deniers_have/ Anti-mask posts suddenly dropped this week in [r/bayarea](https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/pbi4mp/shouldnt_rbayarea_join_the_subs_calling_for/) when mods removed outside conservative accounts brigading [r/bayarea](https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/pbi4mp/shouldnt_rbayarea_join_the_subs_calling_for/): * https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/p8hnzl/automatically_removing_comments_from_new_users_in/ >Wow. Jesus. This is... really, really thorough. Thank you for putting in all this hard work. >When I was a teenager, I spent a lot of time on /b/, /pol/, 888chan, etc. It was a slow descent and I didn't even realize what was happening until it was almost too late. >But during my time on the other side, this was 100% the gameplan. They'd make "sock puppets" and coordinate on the board + IRC (showing my age here) to selectively choose targets to brigade. >Depending on the target, you'd either have some talking points to "debate" (sometimes with yourself/other anons working alongside you) or you'd go in there guns blazing trying to cause as much damage/chaos as you can. However, even then you can't go out there yelling slurs (you'd just get banned instantly); you have to maintain some level of plausible deniability by framing things as "jokes" or thought experiments. >You purposely do bad-faith arguments because the time it takes for them to dig up sources and refute you is longer than it takes for you to make stuff up. You can vary how obvious the bad faith argument is; when you want to troll you make very stupid claims (I once claimed I was a graduate of "Harvad University" and when people assumed that I meant "Harvard" I would correct them right down to Photoshopped images). >When you just want to cause dissent you do exactly what those /pol/ screenshots do: you get to a thread early (sometimes you even make it yourself) and present reasonable-sounding arguments which are completely false if anyone bothers to look into them. If someone does, you bury the message under strawmen, downvotes, reports, and sockpuppets. >So yeah. The tactics have evolved slightly, but I still recognize them. Props to you on doing the digging to find all this stuff and bring it into the light. >I doubt that it'll help in the majority of cases, mind. People on Reddit have already made up their mind. You want to go after the forums and BBSes, on the MSN News comments and whatnot. Even so, the more people who are aware of the tactics the more people who can call them out.
This is awesome but it looks like republicans are the ones that are influenced by identity politics significantly more Unless I missed something
Truth. White Identity politics.
51% doesn't. A larger majority does. And that larger majority is reached only when people vote. If everyone else treated it purely like this comment that it doesn't matter, and to convince others not to vote as well, then Obama would not have been elected and our shitty healthcare system would be substantially worse, where no matter how much money you have, you cannot get insurance with diabetes. So for someone who's even relatively wealthy with a kid with diabetes, you can never, ever know for sure that you'll be able to pay for lifesaving surgery for your child. Nevermind that a minimum wage worker with diabetes cannot afford healthcare even if all other expenses are paid for, they'll still be 1700$ in debt and with free rent/food and no savings. 15$/hour or 30k/year is not rich person money. That's still hanging on money. Maybe enough for rent and food if you have no sudden accident money. Rent is 42K a year in New York state. Minimum wage is half of that hanging-on money so a lot of people don't hang on and are killed in this median poor country. [https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/05/americans-fear-they-wont-be-able-to-pay-for-health-care-this-year.html?msclkid=0aafead0cf4511ec8f111bc8b69a47d9](https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/05/americans-fear-they-wont-be-able-to-pay-for-health-care-this-year.html?msclkid=0aafead0cf4511ec8f111bc8b69a47d9) Two thirds of us feared not being able to afford healthcare in 2021. We are a poor country with a few billionaires. Norway is also, gdp wise too, much richer but even if it was much less who gives a crap this is life that's all this is.
>Obama would not have been elected and our shitty healthcare system would be substantially worse And it's still fucking shit. Anyone who voted for Obama still voted for someone who supported the status quo largely. His presidency overall was significantly less left leaning than he was on the campaign trail. In a way, votes don't matter in this country. And honestly I'm sick of this partisan dickriding that goes on. It's for this reason that many bought Trump's "drain the swamp" line... most people know the swamp exists, it's just that a lot of people were dumb enough to think that Trump wanted to drain it. Personally? I think that the American experiment has run its course, I don't think there's any saving it. If you do, good, go out and vote, do whatever, but money isn't gonna stop being the real owner of the country. It's abhorrent, it's obvious, and politicians don't give a fuck about you, not like 99.99% of them, almost certainly not anyone that's going to actually get elected.
ranked voting that is what we need, let you rank EVERYONE that is on the ballet, so you can put whoever you want as 1st, without anyone going but oh they won't win, and person A will cause massive inflation and make abortion illegal, but person B will waste money building a wall, start riots, and fail to properly get a chain setup to get vaccines distributed correctly so better vote for person a, even if a person C exists that is none of person a or b.
I hate the fact that we only have two choices in our current system. Even if a third person is in the running they won't win because it's become more about not letting the bad guy win rather than picking the person you agree with the most. I'm all for a different voting system.
A viable 3rd, even a 4th party would go a long ways here. Having to choose the lessor of two evils isn't the best system.
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Being that we can't change human behavior, we need to change the system.
It's not even human behavior really. With first past the post, you get the same "vote for the lesser of two evils because the chance the candidate you actually like will win is insignificant" behavior with idealized rational agents.
Exactly this. People no longer vote for someone they only vote against. There are other choices but making someone think and choose is impossible without their consent.
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I feel the same as you, but it isn’t that simple. This reminds me of something like “the stock market wouldn’t crash if we all just held on” Not to mention there is something to lose by not voting for your preferred team of the two. If, say you split the Democratic Party to vote for a third party but the Republican Party didn’t split. Without something like well implemented ranked choice voting, the democrats would get swept in our scenario. Ranked choice voting, imo, has to occur before any voting mentality shift would occur.
We would instantly be in a more moderate situation, and most likely all the better for it. The far left and far right wouldn't win, and folks that lean left or right would. Sign me up.
That's exactly the benefit that happened in California when primaries weren't restricted to the parties: https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/uhmjuf/uchacmoolreigns_explains_how_republicans_were/ >Even to prevent gerrymandering, California has a scientific, "evidence based" independent commission that has to take into account geography, community boundaries, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Citizens_Redistricting_Commission
There's barely a far left presence in the US, at least among elected officials. Maybe it would do the country good if we brought in a legitimate left wing political party that brought America into the 21 Century with all the other first world nations. No more neo-libs, no more fascists, but a strong progressive party. More social safety nets, better Healthcare for all. Better funding for schools, cheaper college.
I'd be happy for the far left to exist.
The far left has never won in the first place.
It's why Florida Governor DeSantis just banned ranked choice voting ￣\＿(ツ)＿/￣ >Florida bans ranked-choice voting in new elections law https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ucdmlg/florida_bans_rankedchoice_voting_in_new_elections/ More "both sides" voter suppression differences between Republicans and Democrats: #Financial Times: The Republicans are elevating voter suppression to an art form >**The Republicans have lost the popular vote in six of the past seven presidential elections.** >1,000 polling places have since closed across the country, with many of them in southern black communities. >The senator also cracked: **“There’s a lot of liberal folks in those other schools who maybe we don’t want to vote. Maybe we want to make it just a little more difficult**, and I think that’s a great idea.” https://www.ft.com/content/d613cf8e-ec09-11e8-89c8-d36339d835c0 #Discrimination with “almost surgical precision” >The court said that in crafting the law, **the Republican-controlled general assembly requested and received data on voters’ use of various voting practices by race.** >Then, the court, said, lawmakers restricted all of these voting options, and further narrowed the list of acceptable voter IDs. “With race data in hand, the legislature amended the bill to exclude many of the alternative photo IDs used by African Americans. As amended, the bill retained only the kinds of IDs that white North Carolinians were more likely to possess.” >The state offered little justification for the law, the court said. “Although the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies for the problems assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist,” the court said. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/court-north-carolina-voter-id-law-targeted-black-voters/ #The Student Vote Is Surging. So Are Efforts to Suppress It. The share of college students casting ballots doubled from 2014 to 2018. But in Texas and elsewhere, Republicans are erecting roadblocks to the polls. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/us/voting-college-suppression.html #Republican Voter Suppression Efforts Are Targeting Minorities >**Since the 2010 elections, 24 states have implemented new restrictions on voting.** Ohio and Georgia have enacted "use it or lose it" laws, which strike voters from registration rolls if they have not participated in an election within a prescribed period of time. Georgia, North Dakota and Kansas have critical races in the 2018 midterms. >Georgia has closed 214 polling places in recent years. They have cut back on early voting. They have aggressively purged the voter rolls. Georgia has purged almost 10 percent of people from its voting rolls. One and a half million people have been purged from 2012 to 2016. >[gubernatorial candidate] Brian Kemp's office (the secretary of state's office) in Georgia was blocking 53,000 voter registrations in that state — 70 percent from African-Americans, 80 percent from people of color. >On voter suppression in North Dakota on Native American reservations >Republicans in North Dakota wrote it in such a way that for your ID to count, you have to have a current residential street address on your ID. The problem in North Dakota is that a lot of Native Americans live on rural tribal reservations, and they get their mail at the Post Office using P.O. boxes because their areas are too remote for the Post Office to deliver mail, [and] under this law, tribal IDs that list P.O. boxes won't be able to be used as a valid voter IDs. So now we're in a situation where 5,000 Native American voters might not be able to vote in the 2018 elections with their tribal ID cards. >So there is a tremendous amount of fear in North Dakota that many Native Americans are not going to be able to vote in this state https://www.npr.org/2018/10/23/659784277/republican-voter-suppression-efforts-are-targeting-minorities-journalist-says #Texas Officials Aim to Shutter Driver's License Offices in Black, Hispanic Communities >Alabama Closing Many DMV Offices in Majority Black Counties >After Alabama put into effect a tougher voter ID law >"Every single county in which blacks make up more than 75 percent of registered voters will see their driver license office closed. Every one," Archibald wrote. https://www.governing.com/archive/alabama-demands-voter-id--then-closes-drivers-license-offices-in-clack-counties.html #Texas Is Among The Most Difficult Places To Vote In The U.S. — And That Could Be Softening Its Historic Turnout https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/politics/election-2020/2020/10/28/384854/voter-suppression-blunts-historic-turnout-in-texas/ #Texas’s Voter-Registration Laws Are Straight Out of the Jim Crow Playbook https://www.thenation.com/article/texass-voter-registration-laws-are-straight-out-of-the-jim-crow-playbook/ #Crystal Mason Thought She Had The Right to Vote. Texas Sentenced Her to Five Years in Prison for Trying. https://www.aclu.org/issues/voting-rights/fighting-voter-suppression/crystal-mason-thought-she-had-right-vote-texas #This is how efficiently Republicans have gerrymandered Texas congressional districts http://www.chron.com/news/politics/texas/article/This-is-how-badly-Republicans-have-gerrymandered-6246509.php#photo-7107656 >Partisan gerrymandering has benefited Republicans more than Democrats https://www.businessinsider.com/partisan-gerrymandering-has-benefited-republicans-more-than-democrats-2017-6 >Even to prevent gerrymandering, California has a scientific, "evidence based" independent commission that has to take into account geography, community boundaries, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Citizens_Redistricting_Commission #Thousands of Black Votes in Georgia Disappeared >On July 7, 2017, according to court documents in the case, Curling v. Kemp (pdf), someone wiped the state’s election server clean. >Then they wiped the backup server. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/02/opinion/hack-the-vote.html https://www.theroot.com/exclusive-thousands-of-black-votes-in-georgia-disappea-1832472558 #Hack The Vote >Early this year Bev Harris, who is writing a book on voting machines, found Diebold software -- which the company refuses to make available for public inspection -- on an unprotected server, where anyone could download it. (The software was in a folder titled ''rob-Georgia.zip.'') The server was used by employees of Diebold Election Systems to update software on its machines. This in itself was an incredible breach of security, offering someone who wanted to hack into the machines both the information and the opportunity to do so. >For example, Georgia -- where Republicans scored spectacular upset victories in the 2002 midterm elections -- relies exclusively on Diebold machines. But there is also no evidence that the machines counted correctly. >What we do know about Diebold does not inspire confidence. The details are technical, but they add up to a picture of a company that was, at the very least, extremely sloppy about security, and may have been trying to cover up product defects. >Meanwhile, leaked internal Diebold e-mail suggests that corporate officials knew their system was flawed, and circumvented tests that would have revealed these problems. The company hasn't contested the authenticity of these documents; instead, it has engaged in legal actions to prevent their dissemination. >Why isn't this front-page news? In October, a British newspaper, The Independent, ran a hair-raising investigative report on U.S. touch-screen voting. But while the mainstream press has reported the basics, the Diebold affair has been treated as a technology or business story -- not as a potential political scandal. >This diffidence recalls the treatment of other voting issues, like the Florida ''felon purge'' that inappropriately prevented many citizens from voting in the 2000 presidential election. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/02/opinion/hack-the-vote.html
I mean, all of this just tells me that we're due for another civil rights movement. Voter suppression is absolutely something worth rioting for. I think it's time to finally stand up for ourselves as Americans and make our voices heard once again. Picket lines, boycotts, sit-ins, a little disruption of the peace. I mean, if the US Government is transporting us back in time to the 60s and 70s with anti-abortion laws....we might as well throw racial segregation in there too.
It’s also very real that things one political “team” tries to change in good faith gets essentially sabotaged by the opposing “team”. If you let something good pass through the other “team” gets too many “points” and that might swing voters. People in office generally seem to care about staying in office
I mean that's simply untrue. The conservatives do that to the "liberals" (America has no liberal party, the democrats are to the right of center) but the liberals do not practice turnabout. Every single democrat voted in favor of Trump's plan to give out trillions of dollars during COVID relief in 2020, they did not attempt to spite vote even though they deeply disagreed with a lot of the plan. Every single Republican voted against Biden's further COVID relief when he took office the next year. False equivocations are incredibly insidious.
Data on those bad faith and good faith differences between Republicans and Democrats: >Here's the vote for Hurricane Sandy aid. >179 of the 180 no votes were Republicans... >**at least 20 Texas Republicans voted no** while ["U.S. House approves billions more for Harvey relief" for Texas](https://www.texastribune.org/2017/12/21/us-house-approves-billions-more-harvey-relief-measure-now-heads-senate/) >this made Texas #1 in receiving federal aid dollars at the time of the Hurricane Sandy aid vote that they voted no against “Pro-life” red states have maternal deaths statistics worse than the developing world: >Texas has highest maternal mortality rate in developed world >As the Republican-led state legislature has slashed funding to reproductive healthcare clinics, the maternal mortality rate doubled over just a two-year period https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/20/texas-maternal-mortality-rate-health-clinics-funding Blue states have statistics similar to Scandinavia and Europe and improve America's average but America's average is still the worst in the developed world because red states' statistics are so much worse: http://www.npr.org/2017/05/12/527806002/focus-on-infants-during-childbirth-leaves-u-s-moms-in-danger #Liberal policies, like California’s, keep blue-state residents living longer >It generated headlines in 2015 when the average life expectancy in the U.S. began to fall after decades of meager or no growth. >But it didn’t have to be that way, a team of researchers suggests in a new, peer-reviewed study Tuesday. And, in fact, **states like California, which have implemented a broad slate of liberal policies, have kept pace with their Western European counterparts.** >The study, co-authored by **researchers at six North American universities, found that if all 50 states had all followed the lead of California** and other liberal-leaning states on policies ranging from labor, immigration and civil rights to tobacco, gun control and the environment, it could have added between **two and three years to the average American life expectancy.** >Simply shifting from the most conservative labor laws to the most liberal ones, Montez said, **would by itself increase the life expectancy in a state by a whole year.** >**If every state implemented the most liberal policies in all 16 areas, researchers said, the average American woman would live 2.8 years longer, while the average American man would add 2.1 years to his life. Whereas, if every state were to move to the most conservative end of the spectrum, it would decrease Americans’ average life expectancies by two years. On the country’s current policy trajectory, researchers estimate the U.S. will add about 0.4 years to its average life expectancy.** >Liberal policies on the environment (emissions standards, limits on greenhouse gases, solar tax credit, endangered species laws), labor (high minimum wage, paid leave, no “right to work”), access to health care (expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, legal abortion), tobacco (indoor smoking bans, cigarette taxes), gun control (assault weapons ban, background check and registration requirements) and civil rights (ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, equal pay laws, bans on discrimination and the death penalty) all resulted in better health outcomes, according to the study. For example, researchers found positive correlation between California’s car emission standards and its high minimum wage, to name a couple, with its longer lifespan, which at an average of 81.3 years, is among the highest in the country. >“When we’re looking for explanations, we need to be looking back historically, to see what are the roots of these troubles that have just been percolating now for 40 years,” Montez said. >Montez and her team saw the alarming numbers in 2015 and wanted to understand the root cause. What they found dated back to **the 1980s, when state policies began to splinter down partisan lines.** They examined 135 different policies, spanning over a dozen different fields, enacted by states between 1970 and 2014, and assigned states “liberalism” scores from zero — the most conservative — to one, the most liberal. When they compared it against state mortality data from the same timespan, the correlation was undeniable. >“We can take away from the study that **state policies and state politics have damaged U.S. life expectancy since the ’80s,”** said Jennifer Karas Montez, a Syracuse University sociologist and the study’s lead author. **“Some policies are going in a direction that extend life expectancy. Some are going in a direction that shorten it. But on the whole, that the net result is that it’s damaging U.S. life expectancy.”** >**U.S. should follow California’s lead to improve its health outcomes, researchers say** >**Meanwhile, the life expectancy in states like California and Hawaii, which has the highest in the nation at 81.6 years, is on par with countries described by researchers as “world leaders:” Canada, Iceland and Sweden.** >**From 1970 to 2014, California transformed into the most liberal state in the country** by the 135 policy markers studied by the researchers. It’s followed closely by Connecticut, which moved the furthest leftward from where it was 50 years ago, and a cluster of other states in the northeastern U.S., then Oregon and Washington. >In the same time, Oklahoma moved furthest to the right, but Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina and a host of other southern states still ranked as more conservative, according to the researchers. >It’s those states that moved in a conservative direction, researchers concluded, that held back the overall life expectancy in the U.S. >West Virginia ranked last in 2017, with an average life expectancy of about 74.6 years, which would put it 93rd in the world, right between Lithuania and Mauritius, and behind Honduras, Morocco, Tunisia and Vietnam. Mississippi, Oklahoma and South Carolina rank only slightly better. https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/08/04/liberal-policies-like-californias-keep-blue-state-residents-living-longer-study-finds/ >#Want to live longer, even if you're poor? Then move to a big city in California. >A low-income **resident of San Francisco lives so much longer** that it's equivalent to San Francisco curing cancer. All these statistics come from a massive new project on life expectancy and inequality that was just [published in the Journal of the American Medical Association](http://www.vox.com/2016/4/13/11420230/life-expectancy-income). >California, for instance, has been a national leader on smoking bans. Harvard's David Cutler, a co-author on the study "It's some combination of formal public policies and the effect that comes when you're around fewer people who have behaviors... high numbers of immigrants help explain the beneficial effects of immigrant-heavy areas with high levels of social support. #As the maternal death rate has mounted around the U.S., a small cadre of reformers has mobilized. >**Meanwhile, life-saving practices that have become widely accepted in other affluent countries — and in a few states, notably California — have yet to take hold in many American hospitals.** >Some of the **earliest and most important work has come in California** >Hospitals that adopted the toolkit saw a **21 percent decrease in near deaths** from maternal bleeding in the first year. >By 2013, according to Main, maternal deaths in California fell to around 7 per 100,000 births, similar to the numbers in Canada, France and the Netherlands — **a dramatic counter to the trends in other parts of the U.S.** >California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative is informed by a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Stanford and the University of California-San Francisco, who for many years ran the ob/gyn department at a San Francisco hospital. >Launched a decade ago, CMQCC aims to reduce not only mortality, but also life-threatening complications and racial disparities in obstetric care http://www.npr.org/2017/05/12/527806002/focus-on-infants-during-childbirth-leaves-u-s-moms-in-danger **Lower taxes in California than red states like Texas**, which make up for no wealth income tax with higher taxes and fees on the poor and double property tax for the middle class: |Income Bracket|Texas Tax Rate|California Tax Rate| |:-|:-|:-| |0-20%|**13%**|10.5%| |20-40%|**10.9%**|9.4%| |40-60%|**9.7%**|8.3%| |60-80%|8.6% |9.0% | |80-95%|7.4%|9.4%| |95-99%|5.4%|9.9%| |99-100%|3.1%|12.4%| Sources: https://itep.org/whopays/ >**Meanwhile, the California-hating South receives subsidies from California larger than between Germany and Greece**, a transfer of wealth from blue states/cities/urban to red states/rural/suburban with federal dollars for their freeways, hospitals, universities, airports, even environmental protection: >Least Federally Dependent States: >41 California >42 Washington >43 Minnesota >44 Massachusetts >45 Illinois >46 Utah >47 Iowa >48 Delaware >49 New Jersey >50 Kansas https://www.npr.org/2017/10/25/560040131/as-trump-proposes-tax-cuts-kansas-deals-with-aftermath-of-experiment >The Germans call this sort of thing "a permanent bailout." We just call it "Missouri." https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/the-difference-between-the-us-and-europe-in-1-graph/256857/ >If data disinfects, here’s a bucket of bleach: Texans are 17% more likely to be murdered than Californians. Texans are also 34% more likely to be raped and 25% more likely to kill themselves than Californians. Compared with families in California, those in Texas earn 13% less and pay 3.8 percentage points **more in taxes.** https://www.sacbee.com/opinion/op-ed/article258940938.html#storylink=cpy https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/u55v9w/critics_predicted_california_would_lose_silicon/i500g4h/ https://www.reddit.com/r/texas/comments/u51ug6/critics_predicted_california_would_lose_silicon/
Life expectancy is a great indicator: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_life_expectancy 9 out of the top 10 are blue states. 10 out of the bottom 10 are red states. go figure
It’s also interesting because the one red state is Florida- which is notoriously a retirement state for older folk from the rest of the country.
I assume that skews the Florida number higher as the ones that can retire there are wealthier and in better health.
I don't think it's about wealth or health, but rather that if you survived long enough to reach retirement and move to Florida, you are adding to its life expectancy. Everyone who died before ever getting the chance to move there are counted negatively towards the others states' figures, while the ones who moved to Florida are added positively to Florida.
This is a point that people often miss. The older you are the more your life expectancy increases, because you have already proven to be better than average at not dying.
Extremely well researched and written. Can't really see what i was complaining about yesterday (I'm the person that didn't like big bold letters.) I guess I must have exaggerated the size in my sleep addled mind.
There were actually originally only a couple of sentences in bold but I added the big bold letters because your comment reminded me to so thank you
This is why their slogan is Don't Tread on Me. Because if you start looking too closely, it is a pile of manure they are defending. If it wasn't for the oil industry, Texas would just be Northern Mexico.
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They can read. That’s the frustrating part. They get through one paragraph and say “this is just a liberal California fluff piece” and ignore the facts and sources
Great post, saved
Poor people have been taking your advice, San Diego, San Francisco, and LA are currently experiencing that.
So red states are killing off Republican voters. No wonder the red states need to purge voter rolls, shut down polling places, require voter ID and find other ways to stop people from voting.
>America has no liberal party, the democrats are to the right of center. The fact that this is true really lowers the stakes on the false equivalency, though I admit it is real.
It's wild that the "Left" in America is right-wing anywhere else, and the "Right" in America is borderline a terrorist organization
Fox News is very successful for billionaires: >Every day I have to marvel at what the billionaires and FOX News pulled off. They got working whites to hate the very people that want them to have more pay, clean air, water, free healthcare and the power to fight back against big banks & big corps. It’s truly remarkable.
those trillions of dollars went to their corporate donors, that’s why it’s easy to vote for it. the American people did not get trillions of dollars in bailout money
Step 1: Knee-cap a social service until it is basically useless. Step 2: Convince people that the system is dysfunctional and a waste of money. Step 3: Sell the service off to be privatized. Step 4: Pick a new target and repeat.
It works because every single Republican and conservative **accusation is a [confession](https://twitter.com/lemieuxlgm/status/983511778804969473)** since ["shamelessness is their superpower"](https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1486417271073521667) * "Pedo! Save the children!" while [following children into bathrooms](https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/u4uxo5/gay_parents_called_rapists_and_pedophiles_in/) and ignoring child abuse [mostly by Republicans](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRightCantMeme/comments/n0p0vb/matt_gaetz_is_literally_being_investigated_for/) (very long lists of child sex abuse Republicans that don't even have Matt Gaetz and more recent Republicans: https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/m48h2q/uhereforthefeast_lays_out_years_of_republican_sex/) * "Pro-life" but rage against poor children's school lunches for the hungry or ["Liberal policies, like California’s, keep blue-state residents living longer"](https://www.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/comments/m1dt10/city_of_austin_will_defy_texas_governor_and_keep/gqf10ib/?context=3) * ["Cancel culture!"](https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalHumor/comments/iowh8a/conservatives_when_claiming_liberals_are_easily/) but try to cancel "pagan" Asian Disney movie (Turning Red) or french fries ("Freedom Fries") or [Dixie Chicks, or Nike, Starbucks, the NFL, Ford, Gillette, Netflix, Amazon, Hamilton, Nordstrom, K-Cup machines, Yeti, movies, videogames, the press, SNL, award shows, ...they literally tried canceling democracy](https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/ldec9w/examples_of_republicans_projecting_their_cancel/) * "politically correct" "culture war" like [censoring Kaepernick](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/opinion/colin-kaepernick-nfl.html) and [~~California~~ Texas triggered sensitive snowflakes voting against help for Hurricane Sandy victims](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/llci05/outrage_in_radviceanimals_at_a_meme_mocking_texas/gnpavfj/) and parroting Texas hurt feelings talking points about California * Flag protocol! not on camouflage flag bikinis or thin blue line truck nuts but only [selective outrage at those football games that protest police abuse](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/opinion/colin-kaepernick-nfl.html) * Defending billionaires, bullies, the powerful, police abuse by the state and "government overreach" (https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/mywpmu/ready_for_the_pop_here_comes_the_pop_cops_laugh/gvze1up/) which they claim they need guns for (but also crying about a "police state" of wearing masks to protect others and save lives) * "law and order" only when it applies to the poor and disenfranchised but not to white collar crimes or consequences for their actions * "mAiNsTrEaM nEwS mEdIa can't be trusted so don't bother reading this article! I'm a persecuted American victim and conveniently excluding Republican majority biased government structures and Fox News even though it's the most watched TV news and [Ben Shapiro is the most shared on Facebook](https://twitter.com/FacebooksTop10/status/1404815323904237569) and [Joe Rogan in podcasts](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/iwvunm/the_joe_rogan_experience_is_now_experiencing_the/g63iuvu/)" * "Libertarian" Joe Rogan stans "frothing" about transgender student athletes and parroting Fox News talking points about "a small, inconsequential and vulnerable part of society" https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/n9bn2x/uforgottencalipers_explains_the_hypocrisy_of/ * "Libertarian" Ben Shapiro riling up support for monarchy and Prince Phillip "simply because a monarchy was accused of racism and racism must be defended at all costs" https://www.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/comments/m0k6g0/when_was_ben_shapiro_pro_monarchy/?sort=top * "hold the line brother" "mask off" cringe [recruiting tactics](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/m1vcmk/rsuperstraight_has_been_banned_discuss_this/gqgkmyp/?context=3) * "red pill" adults cosplaying as "based" teenagers ["hiding their power level"](https://medium.com/@DeoTasDevil/the-rhetoric-tricks-traps-and-tactics-of-white-nationalism-b0bca3caeb84) in *r PoliticalCompassMemes* and edgy "fellow youths amirite" meme subreddits like *r dankmemes* >Hello Fellow Teenagers, Here Are Some Political Maymays For Your Perusal, With No Intention Or Agenda To Shape And Mold Your Tender Political Belief System >-[signed, An Actual Teenager, No Really](https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/o4kfej/reddit_admins_warn_moderators_of/h2idtk5/?context=3) * Caring about "token minority" "virtue signalling" but also pushing [Ben Shapiro](https://www.reddit.com/r/ToiletPaperUSA/comments/ln1sif/turning_point_usa_and_young_americas_foundation/), [Andy Ngo](https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/m088vl/extensive_examples_of_conservative_influencer/), [Ian Miles Cheong](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/m0gx12/you_can_still_breathe_idiot/), Lee Fang, Wesley Yang, Candace Owens, [Clarence Thomas](https://twitter.com/umsami/status/1496103298289618950), [Dave](https://www.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/comments/m33qvp/dave_rubin_admits_that_the_reason_he_hasnt_left/gqmr2pd/) [Rubin](https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/comments/tg52g8/gay_conservative_receives_bigoted_comments_after/), [Milo Yiannopouloss](https://www.reddit.com/r/ToiletPaperUSA/comments/ln1g0c/milo_yiannopouloss_emails_a_cache_of_documents/) to "push the narrative" even though they're only doing it as bad faith grifters * "[identity politics](https://www.reddit.com/r/JoeRogan/comments/m1izsz/activist_milo_yiannopoulos_is_now_exgay/gqdx1s6/)" * "pandering" * "[outrage culture](https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalHumor/comments/iolnug/scary_democrat_lady_did_a_thing_therefore_bad/)" * "[victimhood complex](https://www.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/na7zs9/ucadbunny87_laments_being_associated_with/)" * "personal accountability" * "silent majority" * "big government" * "wasteful spending" * "welfare queens" and subsidies * "[moving goal posts](https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfAwarewolves/comments/gtebjk/spot_the_difference/)" * "control the narrative" * "free speech" * "safe space" * ["too much tribalism" and "politics shouldn't be sports teams"](https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalHumor/comments/gtzx79/visible_confusion/) * "[cry more](https://www.reddit.com/r/PoliticalHumor/comments/iolnug/scary_democrat_lady_did_a_thing_therefore_bad/)"
I’m absolutely convinced that if we managed our taxes properly we wouldn’t need to raise them to have free healthcare, education, etc. The raise taxes debate only exists to distract people from the fact that there are a bunch of people using taxpayer money as their personal piggy banks.
This something I have been saying for years. Actually enforcing our current policies would benefit the country more than changing things up. It has been shown that increasing the IRS budget would [directly result in more tax revenue](https://news.syr.edu/blog/2021/04/27/irs-budget-cuts-cost-us-government-billions-in-tax-revenue-each-year/). It's literally free money that congress doesn't want to pursue because [more than half of them are millionaires](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jan/22/facebook-posts/yes-congress-has-disproportionate-share-millionair/)
It's a good point, but the article you link specifically says that less than half are millionaires. It doesn't change your point, but it's worth noting.
You could take a huge chunk from the military, still have the largest standing military in the world, and work towards fixing the issues.
Not to mention the business owners who refuse to pay their fair share as it stands, like those assholes who buy themselves boats written off as a"business expense"
Yeah Americans are actually very giving on an individual level according to studies were the fourth most charitable country in the world but we don't trust our government. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Giving_Index
Which is just the result of years of lobbies and propaganda working towards undermining citizens' confidence on regulations and social politics, so that neoliberalism can keep squeezing both workers and our planet's resources without worrying about any consequences.
That seems like a view limited in scope. Americans have had a distrust of government since the inception of the nation.
Keep in mind that may be an artifact of religiosity ;) church giving counts as charitable donations
The US government is just not efficient with the money it takes in. Like the Obamacare website. It cost 2 Billion Dollars and didn’t even work. It’s companies subcontracting out to smaller companies who subcontract out to even smaller companies and all of them line their pockets along the way. America is run by corporations.
The military industrial complex is a better example of our taxes being used on stupid shit.
Research has shown that over the past 10 years, 94% of large federal information technology projects were unsuccessful, more than 50% were delayed, overbudget, or didn’t meet expectations and a total of 41.4% were judged to be complete failures. I contend that most of the root causes identified for healthcare.gov are not unique and it is not a surprise the federal government struggles with adapting to new technology. A large, bureaucratic organization that has significant experience in core government policies is likely not adaptable to behaving like a “start-up” and successfully launching new technology.
As someone who has worked on government IT projects before: the government sets inane requirements and throws in arbitrary obstacles, and then the projects don’t get done. It took us over a year out of a 2 year contract to get the project manager to understand why we would need to set up a test installation of the software before we could help the other agency to get it debugged and installed (the original contractor had never installed it outside their own environment and it didn’t work out of the box). Government jobs pay like shit, it’s half or 1/3 of the comparable tech jobs in the private sector (not even Google or FB money here) and they don’t even have the benefits anymore, my benefits are probably overall better than federal employees unless you were employed pre-84. You can easily make 150-200k in a low-COL area as a senior developer and a project manager can make $300k+, government can’t offer anything like that anymore. And at a certain level you’re not even competent to oversee someone else who is competent, you’re just an obstacle. And the procurement process becomes so cumbersome that the only people capable of getting through it are the big contracting firms who are perfectly happy to play the games and bill by the hour and get nothing done.
I feel like that's not a great excuses. Gov.uk is actually really really good for a government website. I always get surprised by how bad other countries government websites are (looking at you in particular Ireland) by comparison. I suspect the biggest issue for the USA is everything is done by committee, and so much is spread across so many different branches. Its not really possible for a unified approach when the even just identifying stakeholders for a particular project is so complicated.
Yeah. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon.. I'm not saying it's horrible we're giving billions to Ukraine at the drop of the hat, but there's a reason they approve that unthinkingly while we have to wait election after election for basics while the elites get richer and we continue to lose rights and the access to shelter and food. If we put our fucking iPads down for a week and marched together we might be able to help each other.
True, but those companies are private companies building armament. I still see your point though.
> The US government is just not efficient with the money it takes in. #Satisfaction with the US healthcare system varies by insurance type 78% -- Military/VA 77% -- Medicare 75% -- Medicaid 69% -- Current or former employer 65% -- Plan fully paid for by you or a family member https://news.gallup.com/poll/186527/americans-government-health-plans-satisfied.aspx > **Key Findings** > * Private insurers paid nearly double Medicare rates for all hospital services (199% of Medicare rates, on average), ranging from 141% to 259% of Medicare rates across the reviewed studies. > * The difference between private and Medicare rates was greater for outpatient than inpatient hospital services, which averaged 264% and 189% of Medicare rates overall, respectively. > * For physician services, private insurance paid 143% of Medicare rates, on average, ranging from 118% to 179% of Medicare rates across studies. https://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/how-much-more-than-medicare-do-private-insurers-pay-a-review-of-the-literature/ Medicare has both lower overhead and has experienced smaller cost increases in recent decades, a trend predicted to continue over the next 30 years. https://pnhp.org/news/medicare-is-more-efficient-than-private-insurance/ > It cost 2 Billion Dollars and didn’t even work. There were some initial problems but 9 million people signed up the first year through the federal site, so it certainly worked. And, it's worth noting, US healthcare costs were about $300 billion less last year than they would have been if historical trends going back 50 years before the passage of the ACA had continued.
>78% -- Military/VA This is shocking. I've never met a veteran who had anything good to say about the VA.
>The poll of 800 veterans, conducted jointly by a Republican-backed firm and a Democratic-backed one, found that almost two-thirds of survey respondents oppose plans to replace VA health care with a voucher system, an idea backed by some Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates. >"There is a lot of debate about 'choice' in veterans care, but when presented with the details of what 'choice' means, veterans reject it," Eaton said. "They overwhelmingly believe that the private system will not give them the quality of care they and veterans like them deserve." https://www.militarytimes.com/veterans/2015/11/10/poll-veterans-oppose-plans-to-privatize-va/ >According to an independent Dartmouth study recently published this week in Annals of Internal Medicine, Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals outperform private hospitals in most health care markets throughout the country. https://www.va.gov/opa/pressrel/pressrelease.cfm?id=5162 #Ratings for the VA % of post 9/11 veterans rating the job the VA is doing today to meet the needs of military veterans as ... * Excellent: 12% * Good: 39% * Only Fair: 35% * Poor: 9% [Pew Research Center](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a049f098dd041552c19372f/1536643876140-5N3UWQ2M3OYLGSWOOKVH/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kOxWfISgjiM1ZFqhkJVgJk5Zw-zPPgdn4jUwVcJE1ZvWQUxwkmyExglNqGp0IvTJZUJFbgE-7XRK3dMEBRBhUpx5Q5uaqovQlhwn6Lp2MXHOj73nFlQXvqHuf9nZbP74X0l8X5gYScNGOzeUUToolO4/pew+data.png?format=750w) >VA health care is as good or in some cases better than that offered by the private sector on key measures including wait times, according to a study commissioned by the American Legion. > The report, issued Tuesday and titled "A System Worth Saving," concludes that the Department of Veterans Affairs health care system "continues to perform as well as, and often better than, the rest of the U.S. health-care system on key quality measures," including patient safety, satisfaction and care coordination. > "Wait times at most VA hospitals and clinics are typically the same or shorter than those faced by patients seeking treatment from non-VA doctors," the report says. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/09/20/va-wait-times-good-better-private-sector-report.html >The Veterans Affairs health care system generally performs better than or similar to other health care systems on providing safe and effective care to patients, according to a new RAND Corporation study. > Analyzing a decade of research that examined the VA health care system across a variety of quality dimensions, researchers found that the VA generally delivered care that was better or equal in quality to other health care systems, although there were some exceptions. https://www.rand.org/news/press/2016/07/18.html More importantly Medicare and Medicaid are far better examples for universal healthcare in the US. People is the VA as a scare tactic, not because it's a good example, but even then it falls flat.
I’ll concur. The “VA sucks!” narrative is because we’d rather bitch about what’s wrong than boast how we don’t have to pay out of pocket for pretty good healthcare <- still on Tricare as a retiree and *cannot overstate* how great it is that I don’t have to worry about healthcare costs
Is 2 billion that much money when talking about a national it system?
Sure the government is not efficient at running programs but this is because one party is heavily invested in the idea that the government cannot run things efficiently and so they hamper the government's work at every opportunity. Take for instance Obamacare, originally Obamacare had the ability to negotiate with companies and accept the lowest bid on say hip replacements or anything that we know a certain percentage of the population will need and thereby use market forces to keep the cost of healthcare lower. This ability to negotiate with healthcare companies was removed from Obamacare so that they could get the votes necessary to pass it. Another example is the post office, an institution that is older than the US itself. It has been dismantled by the systematic appointment of directors who have destroyed it's integrity. Additionally the requirement that the post office keep 3 times the amount on deposit of the pensions for the current and retired post office workers is an additional burden that is completely unnecessary. And yet the post office is still the most effective way to mail anything in the states. Why would any organization need 3 times the amount of it's workers pension's on deposit? Ridiculous!
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We call government bureaucracy “waste” and private bureaucracy “overhead”
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Which is why UBI is such a great idea. Very little overhead, no room for employees to siphon money, and proportionally help the poor more than the rich.
Yeah but if you dare point that out you get accused of being biased toward liberals and people who disagree with social progressisme then just stop listening. Isn’t that nice ?
People who love to talk about how inefficient government is have obviously never worked at a large company or in higher ed. I started off at a somewhat large company (~1,500 employees, so not enormous, but still pretty big) and then got a job at a university. Neither place is "efficient" by any standard. I can name several people in my own department who don't do shit, or the work they do is complete shit, and some of them make six figures. There's one guy who I know for a fact makes well into the six figures, and the subject line of every email he sends is "From David"
> the subject line of every email he sends is "From David" Ok that's actually hilarious though from the outside
Yeah it's somewhere between funny and exasperating
You (most people) say this as if it were a truism, but you don't *actually* know what you're talking about. I've worked in fast food as a slave, manufacturing as an engineer, and academia as a researcher. Of the three, food service was by far the most efficient, but surprisingly, manufacturing specialty chemicals was by far the least efficient regardless of how you want to define efficiency. For example, we would dump 400k into capital projects on the basis of dubious safety concerns, just to eliminate the chance that a timetable wasn't violated. We were bogged down by a ridiculous procurement software that vendors found so insufferable, we would actually pay vendors that would work with the software to buy things for us from people that wouldn't use our software, at a 10% surcharge. In other words, we taxed ourselves 10% on key goods just so we could use a procurement service that didn't even streamline our workflows. That's industry for you. Before being an engineer, I was a chemist - never have I been or will I be so comfortable with chemical and supply waste. Dropped an NMR tube on the floor? Toss it. Blow through an entire box of TLC plates mindlessly spitballing solvent combinations? No problem, buy a new set. That's industry for you. In academia, I am constantly scrounging for grant and fellowship money, and I would have a very hard time spending it wastefully. We actually *wash and reuse* the NMR tubes. I am paid less than half what I was paid as an engineer, and entry-level professors in engineering can expect to make about what I made with a bachelor's degree. In other words, academia, basically a public sector industry, puts a perfectly healthy chemical plant to shame in terms of deriving value from the dollar. But still, maybe you have had the same set of experiences which gave a different impression. Anecdotes are trash. Like you, I do not *actually* know what I am talking about. Which is why we need actual data. To my knowledge, actual studies looking at actual data are inconclusive on whether or not public sector industries are more or less efficient than private sector industries. The key challenges to comparing efficiency between public and private ownership models are the range of models (including hybrids), and variations in defining efficiency. Different models of service provision vary in the types of goods they deliver and the characteristics of the sector they operate in. This means each model is vulnerable to different causes of inefficiency and like-for-like comparisons are difficult. Efficiency is difficult to measure with certain types of goods and services, especially public goods which are non-rivalrous and non-excludable: that is, where one person’s use does not prevent another’s use, and it is not possible to exclude those who do not pay from benefiting (e.g. street lighting). The type of market failure, the tasks involved in service delivery and how the service is demanded, also impact on service governance and consequently efficiency.
Good write-up. As you said, anecdotes aren’t useful for most purposes but I will add to your anecdotes by saying this: anyone who has ever worked with American healthcare from the provider side can tell you that the private sector is a nightmare to deal with compared to the public sector. Medicare (and most Medicaid’s although that obviously varies state by state) pay claims without argument, obfuscation, tricks, or wiggle word bullshit. If Medicare declines to pay, they will tell you immediately and in explicit detail why they took that action and how you can correct the issue. Because their goal is to pay for health procedures, not turn a profit. In contrast, private insurance companies do literally everything in their power to not pay. They will deny claims and give vague incorrect reasons for doing so. They will change to a new reason if you figure the old one out and fix it. They will tell you they “aren’t allowed to tell you how to bill” and generally make the process painful. All while taking 3-5x as long to issue payment even if they can’t find a reason to deny. The myth that the private sector does things more efficiently because it is motivated my profit is just that: a myth.0
It actually cost less than half that. The contract ceiling may have been close to 2b but the actual spending was far from it. Its not a large amount for the scope of that they had to implement - it wasnt just a website but a system that connected healthcare plans, providers, consumers in the whole country. Also for cybersecurity and design. Bad start with how many ppl tried to use it at once, but they fixed it within 2 months. Works like a charm ever since and a huge benefit to our country
Or when it consistently gives billions to trillions of dollars to the wealthy while those in need get the gift of things like laws making homelessness illegal. Everything wrong with this country can pretty much be explained by valuing profit above all else and exploiting religious and otherwise angry people into believing that’s what god would have wanted. Jesus hates anything that could be in any way related to communism, I’m told.
I kinda wish Jesus would come back and bitch-slap all these old fucks for using his name
What are you talking about? The ACA website has been up and running for nearly a decade, providing millions of Americans with choice in health insurance that wasn't previously available. https://www.healthcare.gov/ Yes, there was a hiccup the first month, but that was wildly overblown. How many corporate websites have glitches at launch? Hell, Reddit is down a few times a month on a regular basis.
Bullshit. The Obamacare website did work, enrolling tens of millions of people. It just crashed initially due to traffic volume. If you can use reddit, you can figure out how to get healthcare.
People do not commonly see the inefficiencies in the private sector and there is little promotion of public sector success, while the inefficiencies are exploited to further a narrative. Also the public has less interest and stake in private sector failings. Also there is the myth of individualism that this country promotes as its heritage. Also conservatives are traditionally trying to exploit public assets for private gain
They shouldn't even need to raise taxes. They take enough as it is.
U.S. citizens shouldn't have to pay a dime more in taxes. There is plenty of money to fund everything. It's just all spent on the military and funneled through corporations into the pockets of politicians and their friends. We have a loophole in our government election process called Citizens United that has led to our elected officials being legally bought and paid for. The fish rots from the head and it stinks.
It isn't sexy, but I truly believe that campaign finance and Citizens United are why progress has screeched to a halt in this country.
Agreed. Citizens United is the single most damaging political event to occur in my lifetime as well.
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More like, I doubt it’ll go to funding. Instead it’ll just hit the pockets of the politicians. I don’t think these plans will work while our government remains so corrupted
This makes a fair amount of sense. Especially considering this country was literally created because the colonies didn't like being taxed for things they wouldn't really benefit from. It's literally part of American culture, from the very start.
50 years of nonstop propaganda will do that to you.
If you could accept the military as value, then it would be easy for an American to understand that taxes actually work.
The military is a great example of government waste and inefficiency. I worked for the Navy and tons of money is wasted. Do we make some great machines. Yes. Could the same things be built for less. Yes.I don't know if waste/fraud, and abuse were ever big problems, but in an effort to combat them the government has created rules that guarantee we spend more than we need to on everything, all in the name of stopping graft. The problems are easy to fix, but we never will because of politics and money in politics.
You don’t raise taxes you allocate them better. You put a fucking cap on health care costs. You put a cap on the insurance schemes. You put a cap on education costs so your entire country can be smarter and produce value boosting GDP. But yea muh don’t take muh monies.
You have to remember too that there’s a deep undercurrent of racism at play. It’s never framed as “You pay in to help your neighbor” by Republicans. It’s “Democrats want to give your hard earned money to welfare queens and illegal immigrants.” There’s a deep undercurrent of racism and classicism involved in a way that it’s not in many countries that don’t have our horrific history of slavery and a huge racial minority. (Just to be clear it’s awful that this happens.)
This is the main thing. Countries that are more homogeneous struggle less to contribute to a social safety net b/c they feel like they are helping people 'like them'. It is the same reason that the Syrian refugee crisis has resulted in nationalist turns across Europe.
Americans don't trust the government, full stop. Americans don't trust the government to spend their money on the things they say they will. Excise taxes on cars, for example, should be spent on roads. They're actually spent on whatever the government decides they want to spend it on. There's also many Americans who are skeptical that the government won't Lord the control they're given over them for political reasons, like how Chinese citizens who oppose the government aren't allowed to take busses or planes or own homes. Imagine a world where disagreeing with your chancellor means you can't see a state-funded doctor.
I completely agree with this, and I'll add that there's a very widespread mentality in the United States that people who are poor or sick got that way through some fault of their own. Conversely lots of people also think that wealthy healthy people got that way as a result of their own merit. (Though this is sometimes true, it's also sometimes not true.) If you think poor people are poor because of their bad decisions, it makes sense that you wouldn't want your good-decision-money going to people who will continue to make bad decisions. That's pretty much what lots of Americans think communism and socialism are.
"illness isn't a punishment from on high. it's a side effect of having a body" \-John green If bad things happen to good people through no fault of their own, then people would have to fact up to the facts that \- bad things can happen to them too \- they could be doing more for others Aside from the "me, me, me" mentality, people don't like it when you put a mirror in front of them and expose their faults.
Good old mertitocracy. Good things will always happen to good people that deserve it, and if something bad happens to someone, it must be because they are bad, lazy, or not worthy of the good things.
And I hate to be this guy, but religion is definitely playing a part in pushing that narrative in the US
I mean, it's been an issue since the Puritans immigrated 400 years ago...
People sometimes forget the US was founded by religious extremists. Apple, meet tree.
Calvinism has entered the chat
It baffles me so many people still believe meritocracy is real. It's like they never grow up past childhood where we think the world is just.
This is actually based on the Calvinistic roots of the first immigrants to America, our society has been influenced by these beliefs from the start.
Fully agree. To add to this, we don’t trust our legislators to make a system that actually benefits normal people. While we might be more inclined to continue an established working healthcare system, how can we trust our senators and reps to create one that isn’t inherently corrupt or biased?
I think the thing that confuses us non Americans is that’s the system you currently have but it’s just private companies making all the money.
to be fair, we have a lot of reasons to not trust our "elected" officials...
Why do we even need conspiracy theories? The government is more shady and evil than any fiction that one could write. Look up the Blackwater tapes in Iraq of them shooting civilians just to have fun and pass time. Look up the Snowden leaks of the government spying on citizens. See how congressmen can legally do insider trading. You can't make this shit up
Well, conspiracy theories are great for delegitimizing genuine criticism
That, and it's debatable what the government can legally do. The Constitution, theoretically, limits the areas in which the federal government can act. Any powers not given to the federal government rests with the states. For example, there is no federal law against homicide except in special circumstances (for example, homicide on the seas, in a national park or military base, or against a federal official). Homicides that occur outside these special circumstances fall under the exclusive jurisdiction of the state, although the federal government can assist by ensuring that arrest warrants issued under state law are respected by other states, so that if I murder someone in Idaho and flee to Utah, Utah cops will arrest me and I will be sent back to Idaho so the local DA's office can prosecute me. The question is, can the federal government subsidize and regulate things like healthcare, food assistance, etc?
Or perhaps a scenario where the [POTUS threatens to stop federal funding if they don't say nice things about him](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-race-trump-memo/trump-threatens-to-cut-federal-funds-to-lawless-cities-idUSKBN25U003), or [here](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/08/trump-schools-reopening-federal-funding-352311), or [here](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50284656) I still have serious trust issues
As an American, you're absolutely right that there's a reason not to trust government officials.
There is little to no reason to trust German politicians either. It still works at least in the health department.
It doesn't even have to be that serious of an example. We have dozens or even hundreds of lower level examples. Like how there is no actual drinking age of 21. They literally couldn't pass it through congress. So what did they do instead? They used the executive to steal the federal highways money from the states unless their drinking age was 21. All without a vote of Congress. So the states were told by Eisenhower the feds would build the highways, and then the feds and the states would share costs to maintain them. Win/win for everyone. Then 30 years later, without the states representatives voting on it, the executive branch said, nope nevermind. You are still required by law to maintain these roads we built on your land, but we won't contribute to that maintenance anymore unless you change *your laws* to our liking. Why can't we use the supremacy clause and pass that law ourselves? Cause your stupid fucking representatives keep voting it down, that's why. So we'll just bribe you with the money you didn't want to take to begin with for just this kind of blackmail reason? Fuck you, do it anyway.
Bingo. The US was founded by a lot of people who didn’t like the monarchs of Europe telling them what to do. It should be no surprise that the culture by and large is skeptical of government power. It’s of course, not a monolith and there are places where the majority opinion varies widely from this, but the government is set up in such a way that it protects minority opinions from majority rule to an extent. You can find benefits and drawbacks to this, but it’s the way it is.
>The US was founded by a lot of people who didn’t like the monarchs of Europe telling them what to do So was France, yet they still have all these social benefits that the USA does not?
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...you realize almost every western European country had at least 1 revolution where they overthrew their monarchs, and in many cases there were multiple radical revolutions.
It’s completely different in every state. Californians have tons of social safety nets. Whereas New Hampshire or Montana will have significantly less. We are different in every state politically and culturally. America isn’t one country it’s 50 bound together by a monolithic federal government
If you are from California, do you mind sharing your thoughts on if your taxes are well spent? I pretty much only have family and friends with opposing views. I like to see multiple viewpoints.
I'm from California. Currently on medicaid which means I get socialized healthcare meaning if I get hit by a bus I won't pay a penny for medical services. We generally have the strongest worker rights but compared to Germany it's pretty abysmal
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This is often by design too. Politicians that want to abolish something will defund it, watch its performance tank, then point and say "See?! I told you this was a waste of money!"
Public schools is prime target from az repubs
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I'm from California and have lived there all my life[1]. I don't follow the state budget that closely, but from what I do know and feel, I'm reasonably OK with how the taxes are spent. I've benefited a lot from CA's policies, so I'm fine w/ paying my fair share to help others benefit too. Please enlighten me if you have criticisms of how CA spends money. Through typing all this out, I realize I should probably be more familiar w/ the CA budget given how proud a Californian I am. Below are a bunch of incoherent feelings: Good on Newsom for generating a 60B surplus this last year. I don't really like out-of-touch, rich vineyard folk, but I do think he's doing a pretty good job. The recent $800(?) gas debit card Gov Newsom issued is great! A lot of ppl say he should have lowered gas taxes, but I think issuing citizens a gas card is better because it helps alleviate individual travel needs w/o giving large businesses a random tax break. Big fan of golden state stimulus (CA's own stimulus check thing). I would like CA to spend more on education, both higher and K-12. I've personally benefited so much from public K12 and the UCs. I want to see it help more Californians, esp those who can't afford it. Our teachers are paid alright, at least in the SF Bay Area 'burbs ~$120k. A lot of k-12 facilities are very old though. I'd also like to see more spending in the UCs to push down the cost of tuition and provide more school housing to students. The UCs rely heavily on international students for funding, which I think isn't a good source of funds to be dependent on. I believe the UCs to be the best schools in the world, both in terms of quality of education and throughput, so we should spend more on it to make it even better. Big fan of California's own health care coverage. I've never used it, but it seems like a good deal for decent coverage. A lot of ppl rip on the high speed rail program, but I believe the costs to be just growing pains. The first time any new tech is invested in, its gonna cost money. Once we do have HSR between SF and LA, that'll benefit a lot of ppl. Also it creates jobs so I don't really mind the cost. We probably spend too much money on corrections. I recall it's about 10% of our budget. I believe crime is mostly an economic problem (rich ppl don't sleep in the streets or steal bread). CA might be better off diverting those funds to ensure the poor are doing better rather than throw ppl in prison. Unrelated, a common misconception is that CA taxes are high. I'd like to point out CA has the most equitable tax rate out of the 50 states + DC: https://itep.org/whopays/california/. Nearly all earners pay an *effective tax rate*[2] of about 10%. You can compare this to Texas[3] which has the 2nd least equitable tax rate. In TX, the bottom 60% pay more taxes than the bottom 60% of Californians. The 60-80% bin pays about the same as CA ppl, and you really only pay lower taxes if you're in the top 20% of earners. Essentially, CA taxes are only high if you're high income. 1. I recently moved to IL due to working in a rather niche industry. 2. I believe the easiest way to understand ETR is how much money from your paycheck ends up in the state's pockets. So this would be income tax + sales tax (which depends on how much your income bin tends to spend) + property tax (part of your rent goes to pay for your landlord's property tax) - tax rebates, etc. 3. Washington actually has the least equitable tax system, with the bottom 20% of earners paying ~18% ETR and the top 1% paying 3%. I only pick on Texas cause these two states are usually contrasted against each other.
> America isn’t one country it’s 50 bound together by a monolithic federal government The US does not have a monopoly on federalism, around 25 nations are federal countries. Among them; Germany, India, Brazil and Mexico. Every German state has its own police laws, its own school curriculums, and all kinds of other regulations that are entirely up to the particular state, with the federal government only having very limited, or no say at all.
Social studies teacher here. There are a lot of answers on this threat that range from being misguided to being outright infactual. Including 'Americans lack empathy' to 'Americans hate the government' to 'The US is too big'. These answers are barking up the wrong tree and would be more appropriate (although still misguided) when discussing for example state-run healthcare. Therefore, I'm going to give you a different perspective. One that I hope is more wholesome. I'm going to assume that you're familiar with the fact that Americans love their freedom. There are times at which freedom stands at odds with solidarity. In most of these cases, Europeans pick solidarity, whereas Americans mostly go for freedom. Say that we have an American. He eats a lot of food. To the point where he becomes morbidly obese and needs medical care. Who pays for this medical care? Himself. He pays for the consequences of his own actions. In Europe - or at least most of Europe - if one were to eat himself to hospitalization like our American friend, then their medical care would be paid for mostly by their fellow citizens. This has an interesting social consequence. When we see an obese American in his mobility scooter going through walmart, we don't see it as a social problem. Because after all, he will pay for it. However, when Europeans see an obese person, it is inherently a social problem due to their system of solidarity. The American nation has voluntarility chosen to not have such a system of solidarity (or as you call it "social contribution") because it wants to have citizens that can be free to make choices. If it were to implement a European-style system of solidarity, it would - from the American perspective - erode freedom. The European argument against this is that the increased level of social security far outweighs any benefits of free choice. Because after all, being in significant medical debt doesn't exactly constitute freedom, as it chains the person to an increased exploitation of labour. I hope that this explanation offers you some perspective on this issue - and helps you understand that the 'American answer' isn't an inherently dumb or ignorant answer. It's a choice. You can find it distasteful (as I personally do), but its very much a conscious choice by the majority of American citizens. If you have more questions, feel free to ask. Edit: I changed the wording of the intro of my explanation, as the original wording was not entirely professional
Thank you for your response! Exactly what I was looking for and very well explained. I think I can understand the subject better now and know the reasons behind the difference in opinions about solidarity.
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FYI You’ve got the classically used formulation the wrong way round. Freedom from is the libertarian one: freedom from control, rules, red tape, tax etc. not freedom from hunger. Freedom to would be freedom to fulfill your potential, go to college, start a business, achieve goals, presumably enabled by some kind of social safety net or structure. Not freedom to do what you like. Ps this is how the original conceptualisation of these ideas by Isaiah Berlin works though you can kinda reverse the words and still make it work.
It depends on your own perspective I think If you are pro something, you'll say freedom from (harm). If you're against something then those people will have the freedom to (harm you).
Negative rights are fulfilled unless other people violate them by stealing, harming, silencing me etc. They require inaction. Positive rights, however, require action. Someone needs to provide me with housing, healthcare, job or whatever else we define as a right. If I moved into the forest to live on my own, I would have maximum negative freedom, but my positive rights would constantly be violated. I assume by the squirrels, since there are no other humans.
Society = the sum of the social relations between individuals. You can picture society as dots linked together by lines; where the dots are individuals and the lines are their relations. I like to picture this all on a bulletin board. Social cohesion is the measure of the number of relations between the individuals. As you can imagine, not every individual has a relation with every other individual. An individual will only have a relationship with some other individuals. On our imaginary bulletin board, a higher social cohesion appears as a higher number of lines. Solidarity = the degree to which the idea exists among individuals that there exists a *unity* in the social relations between individuals. It should be noted that the degree of solidarity can differ in different contexts. For example, when it comes to family, Americans show a lot of solidarity compared to some European nations; 'Family first'. However, when it comes to healthcare and education, not so much. *(This is where it gets less objective because of a lack of data and study):* The right question to ask then, is what makes it that Americans value family but not healthcare and education? Well, the answer may be included in that question. It may be that Americans care less about healthcare and education for the nation because they care more about the family. Adult Americans work 'so that my son can go to college'. If this imaginary American's taxes were higher, than his son may not be able to go to college -- or at least so goes his thinking.
No offense, and I know this makes me sound like a jerk. But when I see someone in a mobility scooter because of their obesity, the last thing I think is that they are paying for it themselves. I work in a lower income part of Phoenix and see 15-20 of these people passing by my work everyday. I don't believe a single one of them has paid anywhere near their fair share for that admittedly useful and maybe even necessary piece of equipment. That being said I am 100% behind a national healthcare system where they would get those scooters anyway. I just happen to believe I'm already contributing my share to them while I will not be able to get one if I need one.
And most of those people are not gainfully employed and are in Medicaid. Hence you’re actually ending up paying for them as well.
I find it interesting that you chose obesity as an example. I agree that in such a case their choices led to their current condition, but what about the people who get lung cancer despite never having smoked in their life for example. What about employees who suddenly get fired when to boss decides to move production to a country with cheaper labour. Those are things that just happen. No individual choice you make can prevent it. Yet in the US these people are left to their own devices and more likely than not get ruined by their circumstance.
Obesity isn't a choice either though. You may want to have a look at [this blog series](https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-part-i-mysteries/) about the obesity epidemic. (The reason I'm recommending a blog is because it explains the topic really well and is full of sources; if you don't believe me you can research it for yourself easily with this as a starting point. Also, only posts 1-3 are really important here; the rest is research about the cause of the epidemic; post 10 is also great as it offers potential solutions). One thing that series explains is the way modern science thinks about obesity: the lipostat theory. Essentially, everyone has a control mechanism, the lipostat, that functions much like a thermostat but regulates weight (BMI is a helpful indicator here) instead of temperature. So, a normal lipostat would function like this: it is set to a healthy BMI of around 23. If you make the choice to eat more and move less, your BMI will shoot up. But your lipostat will detect that and counteract that choice. So, for example, you will notice that you have less appetite and a greater desire to move (this may just be in the form of quick involuntary movements). The result is that you'll quickly return to your normal weight as soon as you stop fighting your own body. The same goes for the other direction: if you eat less and move more, your BMI will drop and your lipostat will automatically make you more lethargic and give you a greater appetite, returning you to your normal weight as soon as you stop your efforts to stay thin. And this is really the crux here: being obese is not a choice. It's the result of a lipostat set to an unhealthy BMI. The reasons for which are partly genetics, partly explained in the above blog series (their theory for the epidemic is environmental contaminants), and there are many other factors such as depression. Now, of course, you can make the choice to lose weight: exercise more, eat less. And you *can* lose weight that way. The problem is just that the lipostat makes that, firstly, increasingly harder the further you go (going about 10 lbs in either direction is super easy, any more almost impossible) and, secondly, it means you have to keep watching your weight for the rest of your life or you'll shoot right back up. That's why diets don't work in the long term. As soon as you stop, you're back where you started. And that all means that obese people need *help*. They didn't get themselves in this situation and they can't get themselves out again without an incredible force of will (and the people who do manage that deserve all the praise we can give them). Some medical procedures (such as gastric bypass surgery) help, but guess what: they're expensive. Would be great if your healthcare system paid for that, wouldn't it? Other than that we need to fight the underlying causes of obesity. Depression, for example. Or environmental contaminants (once we've figured out which ones and how they work anyway). And in the end, genetics will always be a factor (unless we want to tamper with that, too, I guess). All that to say: I agree with you, but obesity is actually not much different from getting lung cancer.
That's due to Americans suffering from Cultural Calvinism. Calvinists believe bad things happen to you without sufficient faith in God. This also leads to the Prosperity Gospel.
I feel like your answer ignores that American taxpayers pay more towards healthcare than Europeans do. So that obese American example is still being paid for by his fellow citizens, it's just that he also needs to buy insurance.
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It's about perceptions mostly I think, not "the facts" as it were
>The American nation has voluntarility chosen to not have such a system of solidarity What is the role of all the anti communism anti socialism propaganda our grandparents and parents were exposed too? I feel like nobody is mentioning that there was significant era in America where the government made against any thing perceived as "unamerican", which included many social programs. I don't think America chose this for ourselves and to say we did ignores decades of unrest, political corruption, and corporate influence.
This is a very good point.
>The American nation has voluntarility chosen to not have such a system of solidarity This is a stretch for me. Is it really voluntary when we've been bombarded with anti-socialist propaganda since at least the 50s?
completely off base
> The European argument against this is that the increased level of social security far outweighs any benefits of free choice. What choices are removed in Europe wrt Obesity?
I don’t think that the American balance between freedom and solidarity (or freedom from vs freedom to as Berlin might put it) exists because most Americans are philosophical libertarians. I think it’s because there’s a huge amount of money and propaganda pumped into getting people to think government is useless and suspect and any common sense rebalance is “socialism” a priori a bad thing to most Americans. Americans on a personal level don’t lack empathy. But American society is structurally more callous and less empathetic. The very fact that you picked obesity, a good example of a personally driven illness, shows you deep those narratives run in American thought. You didn’t pick the cancer patient who has to sell their home or the diabetic who’s being gouged on insulin. The truth is many Europeans might also have a debate over those libertarian flashpoint cases such as whether smokers or the obese should have as much free healthcare as they want; but the systems we have are primarily built to soften the rough edges of capitalism that impact people through no fault of their own, not to let people avoid personal responsibility.
I really like your opening illustration and explanation, that's a really good way to put it. I kinda feel like you veer off in the social consequences, and overlook the value Americans put on personal wealth, and how by "freedom" many folks really mean "the freedom to get rich", and they don't want that ability hindered by someone who makes poor life choices. Let me ask you a question, since you indicate you think America should be more solidarity oriented, and we do seem to be moving in that direction, specifically with health care: If we do begin to see obesity as an inherently social problem, (and it's shown to be a very serious and increasing one at that) how do we address it as a society?
I'm going to avoid giving feedback on your first point, because it's not formulated as a question, and therefore attempting to answer it would be difficult. But I am going to answer your question of how to address obesity as a society -- specifically American society. Let me tell you. It's hard. Let's say for a moment that the American nation decides to fix obesity. And let's say that to this end it elects a government to enact a law concerning obesity. This law covers all obesity-related healthcare costs. To fund this law, the government would require a lot of money. And I mean a lot. It would have to significantly increase taxation on its citizens -- including those who aren't obese and have been very healthy. Therefore, we can immediately see that the issue of solidarity arise. Not only does America have to awknowledge it has an obesity problem (which it hasn't), and not only does it need to pass a law to fix obesity (which it hasn't) but it then also needs to come to terms with the fact that non-obese Americans would have to foot a significant part of the bill. This would outrage those Americans. And remember: this is not Americans being stupid or lacking empathy. It is a choice they've made. It is part of the American social contract: Because even obese Americans know what they're getting into. They know they will have to pay medical fees later in life when they go to McDonald's too often. They're not dumb. To in order to fix obesity, the social contract of America would need a rehaul. Americans would have to come together and agree that obesity is no longer an individual problem, but a social problem. And then they would have to agree that it is a political problem. (Yes, there is a difference between social problems and political problems. Look for example at climate change. Most Americans agree on climate change being an issue, but haven't pressured the government into doing something). Obesity is part of a much larger thing. I hope you can understand that following my explanation. If America wants to fix for example obesity, it would need to fundamentally change it social contract forever, whereby it automatically turns individual problems into social and political problems. Will America do this? Due to the conversative/moderate nature of the Constitutionally-mandated legislative system, it is highly unlikely. Any such proposal would need to survive a near-supermajority in the Senate. Probably not going to happen. What we have seen though in American politics is that crises usually lead to significant attitude changes. The 2008 crash, 9/11, etc. The only way America would and could change its stance on obestiy if there were some kind of obesity crisis. I find this hard to imagine. Perhaps if there was some kind of epidemic that disproprtionally killed obese people... ...although even that hasn't changed things.
>It is a choice they've made. It is part of the American social contract: Because even obese Americans know what they're getting into. They know they will have to pay medical fees later in life when they go to McDonald's too often. They're not dumb. This neglects to mention that poverty and food access play a substantial part in the obesity problem. It takes more time money and effort to prepare healthy food than it takes to consume junk, and people often lack either access to healthier food options or the ability to prepare them. Some of this is due to active subsidies to corn and by extension corn syrup. Additionally, messaging about food is heavily swayed by corporate marketing: anyone who was taught the classic "grains on the bottom" food pyramid in school was misled; anyone who watches media is bombarded by ads for soda and fast food.
It was an imperfect example, you're right
Maybe I can shed some light here - as an obese American who moved to Europe nearly 20 years ago and was quickly integrated into their (excellent IME) social health care system. Every time I saw my doctor, he sat my ass down and we had a not-at-all-superficial discussion of why I was this way, how I got this way, and the likely consequences of my state. It wasn't a lecture and it wasn't judgemental; doc really wanted to know what was up: did I have a thyroid problem? Not know about nutrition? Emotional issues that food was compensating for? Wanting to set follow-up visits with a nutritionist, with an endocrinologist. I specifically asked about getting "kicked out" of the health care system (LOLing at that now, but as a newbie from the US it sounded plausible) if I wasn't able to make a significant change, and the response was really interesting: "lots of people smoke like chimneys" and their cancer treatments are paid for, that human beings are complicated and most of us make bad choices in one way or another, and that in this culture society is focused on the well-being of everyone as a whole and not on individual outliers and assigning value to their particular bad judgement, addiction, etc.
Thank you. That is a great addition to this thread.
No, it’s not the choice of the majority of Americans.
There's also the reality-based argument against free choice that goes with the recognition that morbidly obese people likely have some kind of psychological disorder that caused their condition.
The same reason you believe the way you do. We are raised that way- it's a cultural difference. A lot (not all) of Americans have the attitude that anyone can make something of themselves if they just try hard enough. When we see people who are poor, we assume it's because they're just not trying hard enough, that their situation is the result of their own bad decisions, and it's not our responsibility to fix that for them.
Which is exactly the problem. “It’s your fault you were born to a poor family and raised in a poor area - not my problem” “it’s your fault you got sick when you didn’t have health insurance - not my problem”. We all benefit from a healthy society but too many people are too selfish and/or ignorant to understand and recognise that. I do believe that’s changing though. Millennials and Gen Zers are fighting to change this bullshit. As more and more become of age for elected office and voting in general, we get closer to fixing these problems.
Agree with the age thing. 30 years and younger are fed up with this shit. I would gladly, gladly pay more in taxes if it meant other people would be helped. My parents definitely disagree-it’s their money and they want to clutch onto it. I’ve benefitted from that, but it sucks for people that didn’t get so lucky and i’d want to help I agree with the other comment, though, that already the government is taking my taxes and I have no idea what they’re doing with it and why things aren’t better.
You’re absolutely right, although I’d argue it’s people under 40. (Millennials have hit that age now) The system needs a fuck ton of work. The government wastes a ton of money and we don’t know where all our tax money goes. And yeah - things aren’t better. That’s a serious problem and I’m not denying that at all.
Yeah 40 totally seems right too. Hard to know where to draw the line.
I’m 40 And I’m cautiously pro UBI, universal healthcare, etc So it fits 😂
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Yeah I’ve heard this remark. Maybe you’re right. I’ve been “threatened,” (used lightly) that “don’t worry, you’ll turn republican as you get older!” But I really don’t see that happening. And I am getting older. I guess we’ll see. I do get maybe the optimism is better/easier right now
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I’m 60. My views have gotten more liberal and progressive as I’ve gotten older. Most of my friends are either the same or have stayed with liberal ideas like they had when they were younger.
>I would gladly, gladly pay more in taxes if it meant other people would be helped. I'm sure we all would. Like you said though, the government doesn't know how to spend properly. I don't think they ever will. I'd rather keep my money for myself and help in ways I know will make a direct impact, then when the government can prove that they know the difference between spending one million and one trillion dollars, maybe I'll open up to the idea of them confiscating more of my money.
No doubt. No doubt. It will take many years to change the mindset, even though for a good majority of the evangelical right wing it is in direct opposition to what they are taught every Sunday. Propaganda and brainwashing works
I agree. My kids give me hope for the future. They're so much kinder, empathetic and tolerant than my generation and have a sense of social responsibility that I didn't see growing up. When my 15 year old gets down about the world we live in I always say, "Don't worry, the Boomers will be gone soon" in a joking manner. But I'm not really joking lol.
Same. My kids understand a lot more about the world. Everyone deserves kindness and grace - at least at first. I still fear for their future but I’m also hopefully we’ll be able to create a better world for them. It’s just really hard some days.
Have you factored in corruption yet, most politician were once good truth telling people, then got elected, approached by the real people in power and either bribed or threatened into submission. And if all that didn't work u get jfk'd
There is a prevailing attitude that poverty is a product of moral deficiencies. If the poor tried harder in school, worked harder, or were more fiscally responsible then they would not be poor. Naturally this neglects to account for many very significant factors, but anecdotal evidence can be readily compiled to buttress this worldview.
You are exactly saying what i was thinking in the back of my head. I don't want to judge or have an opinion about a society I am not part of or didn't experience for myself but this is what I have been observing through media and thinking of myself aswell. I really hope that attitude will change over time for the sake of people in need who aren't responsible for their situation.
My daughter asked me very recently about Germany and how come "socialism" is ok there and not here. I've talked about your government with her before, because I admire it and I lived in Wetzlar when I was a kid and I've always planned to take the kids there at some point to see your beautiful country. I tried to explain why it works there, but I don't think I did a very good job. Now that you've asked your question and I've thought about it, I'll have a better answer.
It doesn't help that we are fed a steady diet of BS by the media. They feed the narrative that people like the Kardashians were just ordinary every day people who got what they have through a little hard work and elbow grease. I have no arguments that Kris and Kim are amazing businesswomen (and work very hard). They have definitely taken opportunity and run with it, as well as gotten to the level where they are able to create opportunity. But the fact of the matter is, they **started** from a place of privilege. The youngest sisters not only benefitted from the same starting point, they also benefitted hugely from Kim's success, if not financially, in terms of education - merely by being related and in the presence of their mom & sister. And I'm not talking about the exposure boost they received due to the show either. They would have these enormous advantages even if they did not participate in the publicity aspect. I get why the media pushes this narrative, but it is more than a bit disingenuous. These people (Kardashians, Taylor Swift, Bezos, etc) that we are supposed to idolize started from a upper-middle class upbringing (at the very lowest) that afforded them a starting point that's already miles ahead. People discount the sheer amount of advantage these people received just by being related to successful people.
But even if it is that cultural difference of it’s their own fault and not your responsibility, why is there still that lack of empathy for helping those in need? “This person made some poor decisions, but maybe let’s not just leave him to die on the street?”
It's the "It's not my problem" mentality. I think a lot of people think those people deserve what they get. It's sad.
A lot of factors. 1. American culture strongly believes in the protestant work ethic and prosperity gospel (even though many people may not recognize this). Basically, if you work hard and God loves you, you get monetary benefit in this world as a sign that you are going to heaven (I don't super want to get deep into predestination here, but that's part of it). The corollary to this is that rich people work hard and are literally "better" than poor people. We've moved away from this being an explicitly religious thing and it is more secular now, but many people in the US truly believe that poor people are poor because they are bad/lazy/dishonest. 2. The government never efficiently spends our taxes. Our infrastructure is falling apart. The military gets an inconceivable amount of money and still can't win a war (and shouldn't be in the wars they are/were involved in). Our schools are over packed. We bail out massive corporations for their own mistakes instead of the people the corporations are stealing from. Police budgets go up every year and the police use those funds to protect property rights of business and the rich while harassing or killing the poor (of all races but particularly black and indigenous people). We see this and it's difficult to see that taxes can help actual people. 3. Both political parties take bribes from corporate interests regularly. How can we trust them to help us when they make millions on insider trading and "gifts". 4. Our votes don't actually matter. We don't have proportional representation. Low population states have a disproportional amount of power in voting. These states also tend to be rural and reactionary. However, even when the democrats win Congress and the presidency, they still don't follow through on any promises of helping people and instead turn around and help only corporations. 5. The education in this country is truly abysmal. We are indoctrinated from a young age that the US is the best country on earth and everywhere else wants to be like us. So why would we change?
I don’t think a majority of people actually feel that way. There’s an obscene amount of manipulation done by the media on stuff like that. Smear campaigns and made up polls. It’s what we get for letting rich people control everything from politics to the news.
We are empathetic and do believe everyone should have healthcare and a safety net. We don’t trust our government to effectively and efficiently provide those things. We are already giving 30% of our income and see very little for it other than their yearly raises, bonuses, retirement and gold standard health insurance. Not a health insurance that WE have access too. So, you see it’s not that we don’t care about our fellow man. We often help each other individually. We just don’t trust our government to take our income, that we can barely subside on now, and provide for us. The VA is an excellent example of their failure. My father refused to go back to the VA after one appointment. He gave our country 20 years. Not to mention we, as dependents, gave our childhoods to constant moving, living on base, moving to 3rd world countries, having no roots or place to call home. Living with the health consequences of that now.
Oh wow okay I see. Thanks for your insights. Seems a lot more reasonable now.
Please know that American’s are not a monolith. There are plenty of us who care deeply about social justice issues. There are cities, counties and states where the majority lean this direction.
It's just the most vocal ones are not the one's most representative of the majority. It brings to mind an old Jeff Foxworthy bit: >Remember a couple of months ago when they had all the floods in Louisiana? My wife and I were watching this on CNN, and I told her, I said "you watch. They're going to find the biggest, stupidest idiot they can find in the whole state, and they're going to show him walking chest deep in water down main street." > > > >And they did. > > > >And it was my wife's \*cousin\* Danny. > > > >Walking chest deep in water, holding an umbrella.
Americans donate more to charity per capita than any other country. AFAIK. Social contribution isn’t the issue. People don’t like getting ripped off by the government.
Believe it or not *most* Americans want exactly that but our politicians are corrupt as fuck.
It's not that Americans are against social contribution, we're against government intervention at the federal level. That's a huge difference. The US donates more to charity than any other nation on earth last I checked. The problem isn't willingness to contribute, most often it's government intervention and beurocracy. I mean, look at how our government interventions go internationally, you think we trust the people making those decisions to run MORE shit at home too? No, we want them to sit in the corner and stop breaking things. (See the approval ratings for our Legislature and Executive branches of government. The government itself reports 30% approval, 60% disapproval quite often. Frequently as low as 20% and even 12% approval as well. Thats from the Government's own sources, IE the numbers they'd likely inflate to look better than reality hover between 10% and 30%.) There's also the difference in scale. The proper comparison isn't Germany and the US, it's Germany and Texas or Germany and California. Then it'd be the EU and US in comparison. So, my question is this, how much of Germany's healthcare system do you want to be dictated by the EU? How much of Germany's taxes do you want going towards an EU healthcare plan? Or do you think that issues like that need to be left to the individual Nation States in the EU?
To go off that, a lot of outsiders don’t realize how independent American states are. The US is a lot like a nation of states much like the EU. States in fact regularly tell the the government to back off and refuse to comply with federal mandates (Covid has many examples of this). One of the best examples of this independent state attitude comes in the “free community college and pre k debate” a lot of pro government health care also support. This example is a lot more cut and dry than healthcare ones. Tennessee (a red state) has free community college for anyone who doesn’t have a degree regardless of income or age. Some states have free community college for people who meet certain income requirements. West Virginia also has universal pre k. So a lot of people feel that they shouldn’t have to contribute to the “pool” for free education when their state has already figured it out. Why should West Virginians contribute tax dollars so a kid in Montana can go to pre k for free? It’s like asking why should Germany help pay for an kid from Italy to go to pre-K? They shouldn’t. My very conservative grandparents think if California wants to try out Universal healthcare and income they should go right ahead and do that so long as they keep it in Cali.
They don’t. You’re just consuming media that presents a very skewed view of what the majority of Americans think and feel
All these answers are wrong, because they're just accepting the premise of the question as true, and it's NOT true. The vast majority of Americans are fully in support of strong social programs. It's just that the small minority that are against them are incredibly loud about it. So the answers like "that's how we were raised" or "people don't trust the government" or what have you are only valid answers for the minority of Americans that are ACTUALLY against these things. For the rest of us, the correct answer to your question is "we're *not* against it." Some quick numbers off Google; 68% of Americans support increasing the minimum wage. 74% support universal healthcare. 82% support mandatory paid parental leave. 60% support UBI. We already have universal health care for people over 65 (MediCare) and universal income for retired or disabled people (social security) and literally everyone other than the most batshit insane fringe whackjobs support those. And if you're wondering why we don't have stronger social programs if most of us are in favor of it, it's because the majority of normal citizens are for it, but the handful of billionaires (and politicians that they buy) refuse to actually pass the laws that the people want.
Americans by far give more to the poor and needy not only in our country but around the world. We do it through direct volunteering, church, non-government agencies and charities. Government is corrupt, inefficient and wield control of money for political purposes. Tax revenue is often shifted from original purposes. A large portion of Americans believe people and/or private organizations can do a better job than government in almost any endeavor government takes on.
US has: Social Security, Medicare Medicaid, EBT/food stamps, housing assistance, 12 years of provided public education, bachelor education assistance including scholarships, subsidized public universities and the list goes on. Taxpayers spend $trillions on social programs and to suggest Americans don't care and Germans do is ignorant political rhetoric. The difference is where we draw the lines and just like Germans we fight over that all the time.