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On November 09 2024 03:18 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 03:03 ChristianS wrote:On November 09 2024 02:30 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 09 2024 01:51 ChristianS wrote:On November 09 2024 01:18 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 09 2024 00:11 ChristianS wrote:On November 08 2024 10:17 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 08 2024 10:11 ChristianS wrote:On November 08 2024 10:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 08 2024 08:52 KwarK wrote:
[quote]
I don't anticipate defending or apologizing for anything Trump does, though it's possible he might be tricked into something good. I'm still pissed at him for shit from 2016. Though one thing I will say for him is that he's never hidden what he is. Even back then he was openly stating that he'll accept the results of the election if he wins and refuse to accept them if he loses. The scorpion never claimed he was anything other than a scorpion. I have more venom and contempt for those who decided that they didn't have enough scorpions in their lives. You'll notice in that post I don't anticipate you defending or apologizing for anything Trump does either. What I'm describing is a bipartisan mass deportation aka ethnic cleansing effort that would be rationalized by you and other lib/Dems, much like you all just did with your/Harris/Biden's support of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. To ChristianS point when GENOCIDE doesn't pass for "consequences bad enough it’s worth abandoning that first principle (the one about the president being whoever won the election)." it begs the question of what is? So far you guys have given me nothing, so I have to believe Trump and Democrats enslaving 10,000,000 immigrants wouldn't be it either. If the question is “what would the circumstances be under which I would take up arms against my government?” I hope you’ll appreciate that I don’t take the question lightly and don’t necessarily have a comprehensive answer for you right this moment, but I’m certainly pondering what exactly the answer might be. I’m not sure if that’s the question you’re asking, though. "Take up arms" is a bit dramatic, I'm at "what would the circumstances be under which I would join a revolutionary socialist organization" (or "I would read like 50% of a book by a socialist", edit: or just "I would stop voting for Democrats") and have been for YEARS waiting on you guys to have an answer to where you draw the line if not genocide for just that much. I’m imagining various scenarios about Trump carrying out some or all of the atrocities he promised to commit, and your question is “how bad would that have to get for you to agree never to vote for Democrats again?” Do you get how it doesn’t seem like a responsive question? If I promised that right this moment, it wouldn’t change the path a bit because I’m just one CA voter, and if voters en masse made the same promise, surely it would just embolden Republicans to commit atrocities without fear of electoral consequence. The obvious conclusion is that no amount of promising not to vote for Democrats is capable of stopping Republicans from committing atrocities, no? You had to skip "what would the circumstances be under which I would join a revolutionary socialist organization" to get to the edit about voting. You should have started there. But the “how bad would that have to get for you to agree never to vote for Democrats again?” besides being a bit of a transmutation, is a decades old question that precedes us. You speak to the timeliness as if I haven't been putting that question in one form or another to you and libs/Dems here for years without you all ever having anything resembling an answer. Most people just lob childish insults, or talk about any inane/bad faith thing (even on reasonable topics) they can with the oBlade types because as we know, they can't help themselves. You and the person you tried to elect President had the chance to discuss ending the enslavement of your fellow Californians and neither of you mentioned it 1 time afaict. I don't think people appreciate how fucked up that is on so many levels. I don't mean that as a personal indictment of you (I absofuckinglutely do of Harris), but of such deep systemic problems that it probably barely crossed your radar. It'd be bad enough if it was passing despite Harris NEVER mentioning how she was voting on ending the enslavement of her fellow Californians (let alone pushing for it), but it is failing. That makes it so much more unforgivably bad. + Show Spoiler +Maybe it would be helpful to pivot a bit to a related subject: a word socialists often like to use is “revisionism.” As I understand it, it dates back to a late 19th century German socialist named Eduard Bernstein, and the concept is “we don’t need a revolution, we’ll just form political parties, win votes, and enact legislation to bring about socialism.” Socialists don’t exactly use the term as a compliment; indeed, it’s the punchline to the joke about socialists that Drone posted a while back: + Show Spoiler [Drone’s joke] +There's also this joke, which comes in various ways - just copy pasting the first one I found: Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "The proletariat love you. Do you believe in the proletariat?"
He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a communist or a socialist?" He said, "A communist." I said, "Me, too! Marxist-Leninist or anarchist?" He said, "Marxist-Leninist." I said, "Me, too! What kind of thought?" He said, "Trotskyist." I said, "Me, too! Intersectional Trotskyist or Classical Trotskyist?" He said, "Intersectional Trotskyist." I said, "Me, too! Socialist Action (United States), Socialist Alternative (United States), or Socialist Equality Party (United States)?"
He said, "Socialist Action (United States)." I said, "Me, too! Socialist Resurgence splinter group, or Socialist Action mainline?" He said, "Socialist Resurgence splinter group." I said, "Me, too!"
"Socialist Resurgence committee of 2019, or Socialist Resurgence committee of 2021?" He said, "Socialist Resurgence committee of 2021." I said, "Die, bourgeois revisionist!" And I pushed him over. Lenin spends no small amount of time in What is to be Done tearing into Bernstein and Revisionism, and yet for all his sarcasm and scorn, I have trouble enumerating what exactly would be his explanation of why socialism cannot be enacted by electoral campaigns in a liberal democracy. He’s not a vanguardist, he doesn’t think the proles are too dumb to get it and you need a small cadre of radicals to stage a coup and give them their dictatorship against their will. So if you’re going to have to convince the masses of your program, why would it be an unacceptable route to elect representatives who pass bills and amendments? To be clear, I’m not asking this because I think the conclusion is wrong. Now especially, but even after 2020 I didn’t have a ton of faith in our democratic process as an effective engine for change or political decision-making. Kwark et al. are going on about how dumb it is that voters would blame Biden for inflation and such when it’s trivial to analyze why inflation happened and whether Biden did a good job combating it; but the fact remains, voters overwhelmingly make decisions on the basis of those kinds of factors. Where can you go with that besides questioning the premise of government based on elections decided by this electorate? If a fairly simple analysis like “why does inflation happen?” is way beyond what we can expect of the average voter, I certainly don’t think you can expect a majority of them to undergo the kind of revolutionary socialist self-education you’re begging everyone in the thread to find time for. But… then what? Are we back to vanguardism? Lenin eventually got somewhere with this stuff, but I’m not particularly thrilled to follow the path of early 20th century Russia (neither how they got to revolution, nor where they when after it). I want to keep this manageable so the rest can wait. Let's take back a step and focus on "what would the circumstances be under which I would join a revolutionary socialist organization". I obviously favor Revolutionary Socialism (as developed primarily by Black radicals mostly after WWII) but how about just a socialist org? We could include DSA which still does plenty of voting for Democrats? I get people are busy, but "democracy" in any meaningful sense of the word isn't just voting every couple years based on a party you have no influence on. + Show Spoiler +I mean, I guess the generic answer is “people (including myself) will sign onto a political project if they think it seeks better outcomes than the alternatives and has a reasonable chance of achieving them.” When exactly to focus on ideology (“seeks better outcomes”) and when to focus on efficacy (“has a reasonable chance of achieving them”) is a constant dilemma with no simple solution, and different posters might place their objections to socialist organizations on one or the other (or both), but I’m guessing for most folks around here, they think revolutionary socialists have almost no chance of ever taking power in America (extremely low on the efficacy measure), and if they did, they worry all the quoting Lenin and Stalin and Mao is an indication they would institute some kind of authoritarian regime (presumably low on the ideology measure as well).
But that’s me guessing at what everybody else thinks. For myself I guess I do figure the socialists tend to have somewhat idealistic/naive conceptions about affecting political change (i.e. potentially low on efficacy) but all the hard-nosed cynical Democratic political operatives seem pretty fucking incompetent, too. Feels like nobody knows anything about how to make things happen, and the actual outcomes are decided mostly by chance or circumstance. This is what Democrats robbing their supporters of the actual history of change does smh. Most of what we take for granted today (weekends, overtime, not being locked inside burning buildings, etc) that was achieved (mostly in the first half of the 20th century and before) was won by socialist guided organized labor engaging in organized mass civil disobedience. Democrats are functionally the people that shepherded people away from the functioning socialist approach to change and toward the lib/Dem one you recognize is shit now. On ideology I just don’t feel like I understand what socialists want enough to even say anything conclusively about it. + Show Spoiler +Certainly the realities of Soviet or Maoist rule seem pretty grim, maybe less so than the monarchist or colonialist regimes they were meant to replace but not obviously superior to liberal democracies, either. But also those were/are pretty much entirely undemocratic regimes, and socialist revolutionaries in the US always seem to think their system will be democratic. Which leads me to the question you decided to put off until later: how exactly are you supposed to get widespread support for a program that requires so much challenging self-education, and if you could, why would you need to overthrow liberal democratic governments just to establish a new system that’s apparently still democratic? Like, why are we even still talking about my vote? + Show Spoiler +I didn’t vote for Biden in the primary and it made no difference. I did vote for Kamala in the general and it made no difference. I’m well aware my vote is insignificant, I mostly only bothered to fill the thing out for some of the propositions that apparently are also gonna fail (fucking hell, this state). You and I seem to be in agreement that meaningful change is only gonna come from non-ballot-related activities, so why do we keep talking about whether I bubble in that first question or not? Why do you even care? Same reason as Kwark and the rest of the Harris/Democrat supporters: On November 08 2024 22:53 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 08 2024 15:37 KwarK wrote:On November 08 2024 15:31 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 08 2024 14:04 KwarK wrote:On November 08 2024 13:04 Salazarz wrote:On November 08 2024 11:46 Razyda wrote:On November 08 2024 10:57 GreenHorizons wrote:
[quote]
If you actually believe he attempted an insurrection, then taking care of him might have been the first thing Biden should have done as president and let the immunity thing come to the court that way (if the CIA/FBI/NSA/ST6/whatev somehow was traced back to him).
Then, once Biden knew he would be immune from prosecution for pursuing justice for treason, that was another pivotal chance passed. Now, he knows this treasonous insurrectionist (set aside the fascism for the moment if one wishes) is going to get what he was after during his treasonous insurrection attempt, and he's got a chance to stop that from happening.
If I believed Trump was a treasonous insurrectionist (let alone also a fascist with the whole project 2025 crew in tow) as a never-Trump conservative (dunno if that's a close enough descriptor for you) I would support Biden enacting patriotic justice based on that alone. I just quote this post, but GH to put last few pages of your posts in context of your usual stance: Liberals will descend to fascism - now you advocating for Democrats to become a fascist to stop Trump. Lesser evilism = bad, but Democrats becoming fascist is better than Trump becoming president, therefore in this case lesser evilism good. Sort of makes sense - you can then claim "told you Democrats will become fascists". You come across much more dictatorial than Trump ever did (bolded parts). You are not afraid that Trump can become dictator, you are angry that you wont (or whatever Secretary you happened to be infatuated with). Arresting a guy for leading a coup is not fascism, it's just following the laws. Plenty of randos in the crowd that stormed the capitol got criminal charges. The way I see it, there's a huge disconnect in messaging and actions of the Dems. Either Trump is all the things they say he is, and then them not dealing with him is a massive failure to uphold the law and security of the country; or he is not, in fact, all the things they say he is and they're just trying to push people into voting for them because 'big bad orange will get ya' otherwise. It's the first. They trusted in institutions that couldn't be relied upon. Sooo the same thing they are doing by handing Trump/Project 2025 control of the most lethal military in the world? That' should work out well /s We can ignore all the warnings people got that this would happen, and just go with "fool me once, shame on you, fool me 542 times..." Also, to be fair, the institution of the Supreme Court did give Democrats the power to hold him accountable. Unfortunately, Democrats are even less reliable than Trump's Supreme Court. Dunno why you keep holding this stuff against me as if I'm running the Democrats. ...supporting them. They ostensibly derive their power from you and voters like you. From a liberal democratic pov, you and people like you need to extract better than that from them. Alternatively, you and voters like yourself need to extract them and replace them with people that will do better than make the same mistake for the 543rd time of trusting institutions and norms to control Trump/Project 2025's openly fascist ambitions. I'd prefer you and voters like yourself just join revolutionary socialist orgs and go from there, but if you all insist on keeping your lib-Dem politics, the WORLD needs you to demand better from your leaders RIGHT NOW, EN MASSE, in every venue possible. Which ties into the issue with you and other libs/Dems not having a line for when you'd have to stop supporting Democrats since clearly even genocide doesn't cross it. On November 08 2024 10:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 08 2024 08:52 KwarK wrote:On November 08 2024 06:45 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 08 2024 05:33 WombaT wrote:
If the Democrats framed Trump as a shitbag who’d shortly fuck off, let’s figure out some messaging to counter him, that’s one thing. Kinda my position
But they want to simultaneously frame him as a Fascist threat to democracy, while also doing nothing to block his ascent to power What is terrifying to me is that libs/Dems are just going to retcon the "Trump is a fascist that will destroy democracy" thing, as we see happening now. Then insist no matter how authoritarian Trump gets, that he's not actually a fascist dictator, because then electoralism wouldn't be worth shit and they are lesser evil absolutists. They'll be the one's explaining " actually this bipartisan mass deportation bill is a win because we got some more weapons for Israel and Ukraine!" Then " Oh, turns out there's no where that will take the ~10,000,000+ people we Democrats and Republicans rounded up, guess we'll have to make these camps a bit more permanent" Then " Oh you know who could do the work? These people illegals we rounded up! It's okay if they don't want to, we can legally force them" and so on....That's just one of the lib/Dem to fascism examples but there's more. Before anyone tells me "oh Democrats wouldn't let Trump enslave undocumented immigrants, put them in work camps, and violently punish those that refuse". Genocidal Democrats are already building the cop cities across the country that could fill/staff the prison camps while actively voting against ending slavery in California in 2024 (Harris NEVER mentioning this being on her ballot is actually unbelievable to me). FOH. This is all happening right in front of our faces and libs/Dems are just like "man this hot tub is nice, smells a bit like spices though...". I don't anticipate defending or apologizing for anything Trump does, though it's possible he might be tricked into something good. I'm still pissed at him for shit from 2016. Though one thing I will say for him is that he's never hidden what he is. Even back then he was openly stating that he'll accept the results of the election if he wins and refuse to accept them if he loses. The scorpion never claimed he was anything other than a scorpion. I have more venom and contempt for those who decided that they didn't have enough scorpions in their lives. ... What I'm describing is a bipartisan mass deportation aka ethnic cleansing effort that would be rationalized by you and other lib/Dems, much like you all just did with your/Harris/Biden's support of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. To ChristianS point, when GENOCIDE doesn't pass for "consequences bad enough it’s worth abandoning that first principle (the one about the president being whoever won the election)." it begs the question of what is? So far you guys have given me nothing, so I have to believe Trump and Democrats enslaving 10,000,000 immigrants wouldn't be it either. You voting for someone that couldn't even mention that there was an opportunity to stop enslaving her fellow Californians from her home state when the whole country was looking at her, is emblematic of how problematic that is. + Show Spoiler +Sure, the Democratic Party derives political power and legitimacy from people like me or Kwark or DPB being willing to vote for them. The US government derives power and legitimacy from our labor, tax dollars, etc. If we were to stop being willing to vote for them, they’d pivot to whatever position allowed them to maximize their support from whoever continued to engage with the political system; if we were to stop working or paying taxes the US government would pivot to deriving its power and legitimacy from whoever continued to engage with the economic system.
You’re fundamentally opposed to making moral arguments on a “compared to the alternative” basis, but personally I’m going to be more interested in plans which achieve better outcomes, which requires choosing among available alternatives. Political abstention is one of those available alternatives but I have yet to hear even a theoretical mechanism by which it would achieve better outcomes for anyone. + Show Spoiler + If I didn’t give a shit about achieving better outcomes for people, and just to keep my name or reputation or immortal soul unsullied by association with horrible stuff, I can see how political abstention would help me. But when this stuff has real, enormous consequences for other people’s lives it’s hard for me to feel good about just trying to not get my hands dirty.
But anyway, haven’t we been here before? Haven’t we already done this? I don’t want to talk about trolley problems, particularly at a moment when it’s already clear to both of us that neither of us have any influence over whether the lever gets pulled or not anyway. Like, I agree that Kamala should have voiced support for the amendment, and more generally that CA liberals are responsible for a state that continues to enact regressive and exploitative policies while pretending everything would be progressive and wonderful if national politics went their way. I have no control over that. Supposedly leftists have proposed courses of action outside electoral politics that might ameliorate things, why don’t we talk about those? Doesn’t that sound more productive? "Not voting for Democrats" Isn't political abstention. I know you know that and strawman it that way disingenuously on purpose. You should stop that. Man, “political abstention [from national electoral contests such as the recent presidential election]” is a lot to type! I write my posts on my phone! But yes, I certainly understand that you don’t advocate abstention from all political activity, not even from all electoral politics, and did not mean to imply otherwise. Would “national electoral abstention” be a better shorthand? Or would that still be a strawman since you don’t necessarily advocate abstention from all national electoral contests, just most of them in the current political environment?
You should have some control over that. There are people that go to the Democrat meetings and make the policies from the local to the national level (though for Democrats it typically flows the other way nowadays). That could be you just as easily as anyone else (but for the whole Hamster Wheel + Show Spoiler +1. There's a problem
2. Politicians won't fix it
3. Need to replace the politicians with ones that will
4. Can't replace the politicians because of how the system works
5. Need to fix the system
6. Politicians won't fix it (because it benefits them)
7. Repeat ad nauseam. problem of electoralism)
That sounds like the kind of thing you’d dismiss as misguided attempts at reforming the current system, and Lenin would dismiss as Revisionism. Surely you’d say I dedicate my energies to something more revolutionary?
As to talking about "proposed courses of action outside electoral politics that might ameliorate things" being more productive, it is with socialists. It Is with (edit:most some)reasonable social democrats. Not so much with libs/Dems that are primarily just looking to shit on them in order to rationalize their continued support of genocide and the rest.
So you’re trying to convince everybody to be socialists, but you don’t want to talk about all the good stuff socialists can do except with other socialists?
Maybe part of the problem here is that the only correct answer to “how should I engage with national politics?” is “Don’t!” but this is fundamentally a thread about US national politics. You’re apparently doing a lot of good engagement with local organizations on local problems, but you don’t want to talk about it here because it’s local stuff nobody in the thread has reason to know or care about. Meanwhile what you actually think the rest of us should do is similarly engage with local organizations on local problems, but you can’t tell us how to do that because you’re not from the same place we’re from. I’m not sure what the answer to that problem is, though; I can think about how to have solidarity with my coworkers but it’s not especially useful to discuss in the thread.
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On November 09 2024 03:02 Sadist wrote:
So for my european friends, not only does it suck to lose your job or be laid off in the US, you also lose your health insurance. You get the "great"option of keeping your insurance through COBRA but you have to pay your employer premium out of pocket (which most people dont even know about ) but its typically in the range of $500-$1000 depending on if you have a family. This is in addition to what you normally pay (i pay somewhere around $450 for my wife and myself). So not only do you get fucked because you are out of work and if you are lucky you get unemployment, you get fucked by being out of pocket for your health insurance to the tune of $1000-$1500 a month. Thats not even counting copays, deductables, etc.
I distinctly remember my COBRA premium from 2018, it was a little over 1000 dollars a month, and at this time I would've been considered a perfectly healthy young single male.
US Healthcare is a scam and theres really no reasonable position to the contrary lol.
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On November 09 2024 01:55 Uldridge wrote:
No, actual funding could be used to find a cure instead of management, with shitty side effects at that.
There is no cure for HIV. There are only treatments. Your objection makes absolutely no sense. It's an effective treatment, so stop fearmongering.
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On November 09 2024 02:54 Luolis wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 02:52 L_Master wrote:On November 09 2024 02:29 Luolis wrote:On November 09 2024 02:06 WombaT wrote:On November 09 2024 02:01 L_Master wrote:On November 09 2024 01:32 WombaT wrote:On November 09 2024 01:29 oBlade wrote:On November 09 2024 01:17 Simberto wrote:On November 09 2024 01:09 oBlade wrote:On November 09 2024 00:44 Simberto wrote:[quote] Oh, i assumed that "utopia of public systems" was meant as sarcasm. Sorry for that. But if you really meant it seriously, look at the data i post later in this post. So you cannot name a single country with private healthcare (or more specifically, with a non-universal healthcare system of some sort) that does better than the US. You just assume that they must exist? Meanwhile, i can name a lot of countries with universal healthcare systems in all variants who are cheaper and have better results than the US. I will link the thing i always link in this discussion, the OECD Health at a glance study, specifically the part 7 about health expenditure, but you can also look at the other parts about health results. Some choice graphs: The funny thing is that the US still spends more public money on their shitty broken system than other countries spend on a full universal healthcare system. As you can see, while switzerland may be at position 2 in health costs per capita, it is still at about 2/3 of the costs of the US, and pretty much right in the pack of other universal healthcare countries. I simply cannot see how you can reach any conclusion but that universal healthcare is both cheaper and better than what the US has from this data. Edit: Apparently i haven't quite figured out how to post images here currently, i will keep on trying. Edit 2: Ah, now it works. I am not making the claim that one or the other system is "better." There is no purely private system, including the US, because every country has a government, making it at least that much public. Therefore I preemptively didn't answer on the assumption that any country I name, you will simply go "no that's not private in the right way" and put a goalpost somewhere else. The significance of your graph is limited. No other country delivers half of the world's medical research and advances. No other country is as wildly unhealthy, right? China is perhaps similarly unhealthy? If you go by obesity, and the other relevant similarity is pure size (of the nation I mean, not obesity-wise). Is China's system better? The spending is below average. Is India's best? They're equally massive but spend the least. There's Indonesia down there also. Like you post a graph saying the US spends more, which everybody knows, but you're not comparing it to the US. For all you know the excess could all be Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA. Looks to me like the dark blue part is the main factor. That wouldn't be an issue with the privateness of the system. If every other country does a thing better than you, why not learn from them and steal one of their systems? If Medicare, Medicaid and the VA are so bad, just steal what Switzerland is doing. Or Japan. Or the Netherlands. Or Denmark. Or whatever. There are dozens of systems out there which deliver radically better than the US system, and they all have one thing in common: They are universal healthcare systems. I don't really care about the details within the US system, because i don't explicitly know what Medicaid, Medicare or the VA do exactly. What i do know is that as a whole, the US system is just bad, (except for the superrich of course, it provides quality care for those who don't care about the price). My assumption here was that "Medicare for all" basically means "We want universal healthcare in the US in some way". Then how could you know the Netherlands would not be more expensive and worse outcomes if implemented in the US? On November 09 2024 01:17 Simberto wrote:
Meanwhile, there are zero countries which do private/non-universal healthcare which do better than the US. You couldn't even name one. If you define "better" a certain way, there will be no countries that do healthcare better than the US. If you define "better" another way, there will be private and public countries that do it better. If I then name one of them and you change the definition of "better" after the fact it will have been a waste. Explain what you mean by "better" because you showed a graph of cost which means India must have the best most affordable healthcare in the world. What are we valuing, with what weights, when we say one of these is "better." On November 09 2024 01:17 Simberto wrote:
But instead of seeing that and recognizing that you should really, really just move to a universal healthcare system, you are so blinded by ideology that you think that you really should do more private stuff instead, because that has been working so well so far. And trying to deflect to other reasons is just another weird push for US exceptionalism. The US is not so unique that it cannot compare with and learn from other countries. Sure I'm open to moving to a universal healthcare system if it's the best option. How would that shift occur and what problems unique to the US that cause its bar on that graph to be 50% higher than Switzerland's would it specifically fix? What would convince you a universal healthcare system is the best option? Well, the first thing that pops out is "best". Best for whom? Under what circumstances? Or is the argument that on every single vector for every single individual it is best, which seems implausible? If that isn't defined clearly, we can have crazy arguments fighting with imagined shadows of the other persons position. That aside, assuming a clear definition of best, for me it's the only thing that matters: Results. And right now, the results look pretty favorable to universal. How could those results look even better? Need more test cases with very homogenous populations for me. US racial demographics are very, very different to other countries listed. If you start getting parts of the US doing universal and other parts doing our current system, and the universal keeps crushing....then it goes from "Yea, universal looks pretty good" to "Universal GOAT status" for me. Why do populations have to be homogenous? Certain ethnic groups do have slightly different medical needs, but those aren’t giant hurdles You can make very simple, IMO correct arguments that certain political systems work best, or less well depending on how politically and culturally homogenous a nation is. I think it’s a much harder sell with healthcare It's just the classic "black people are ruining our country" argument that he's trying to mask as being rational and somewhat politically correct. Except the country isn't "being ruined". And you're right, men like Thomas Sowell are just total human pieces of garbage and we should just deport all of them. eyeroll.jpeg In your own words, tell me what homogenity has anything to do with the efficiency of different healthcare systems.
If you mean tell you why I think it *might*, then both genetic factors in longevity and then differences in personality. E.g. less impulsive -> less risk taking behavior -> plausibly longer lifespan.
My eye roll is for the out of nowhere value judgement in there.
I think you’re implicitly assigning “good” or “bad” with certain differences in personality to come to that idea.
I can imagine you going “oh he thinks certain races are more or less impulsive and thus they are bad”. Maybe I’m wrong, if so apologies.
In either case, I find that statement nonsense. I see tradeoffs in personality traits. High impulsivity/low conscientiousness for example might take more risks and engage in certain harmful behaviors more often…but flip side is those also tend to be the traits of brilliant people that take the crazy risks in entrepreneurship or research that push or society forward.
Or take trait neuroticism. High neuroticism sounds “bad” to most people. Like oh you’re just more susceptible to negative emotions than other people. But when you consider the superorganism it’s beneficial. You’re higher neuroticism people are your canaries in the coal mine. They are the people that are first to notice things getting bad, and make noise that gets everybody else aware. You’re low neuroticism would just go “it’s fine” as things go wrong around them until they hit a point where they realize “oh shit were fucked” but now it’s too late.
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On November 09 2024 03:06 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 02:49 Sadist wrote:
Oblade you can check for what procedures cost in other countries.
MRIs for example. How about heart surgery? Everyone knows the US system is corrupt. Its nothing to do with Americans being more expensive to treat, we pay more and get less.
Are you telling me it costs more to get heart surgery at a hospital that was more expensive to build, staffed by people who make more per year, equipped with stuff that costs more to develop, paid for by insurance pooled with people who are 45% obese, who are more likely to have heart conditions, meaning have more heart conditions? The US system is corrupt so we should entrust it to a government who lets doctors ship every grandparent with a cough to get an MRI to cash in on the free government bucks. Okay. If price transparency is your thing, Republicans have pushed for it. Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 02:49 Sadist wrote:
Health insurance sucks, what we need is Health Care. Its not insurance if you have a chronic condition.
Medicare is not bankrupting the country either. We need to fix it and let Medicare negotiate prices if a drug maker wants to enter the US market. Medicare is $900 billion a year that's not just pharmaceuticals. Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 02:49 Sadist wrote:
Also we already take care of the most expensive people anyway. Triple the tax for medicare and id still come out way ahead compared to insurance. Also we could finally divorce health insurance from employment which should be a crime. What do you mean "triple the tax" for Medicare?Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 03:02 Sadist wrote:
So for my european friends, not only does it suck to lose your job or be laid off in the US, you also lose your health insurance. You get the "great"option of keeping your insurance through COBRA but you have to pay your employer premium out of pocket (which most people dont even know about ) but its typically in the range of $500-$1000 depending on if you have a family. This is in addition to what you normally pay (i pay somewhere around $450 for my wife and myself). So not only do you get fucked because you are out of work and if you are lucky you get unemployment, you get fucked by being out of pocket for your health insurance to the tune of $1000-$1500 a month. Thats not even counting copays, deductables, etc.
What you described is not a unique function - in a country with public healthcare your employer is paying a premium/tax while employing you that you become responsible for if you want to have healthcare while lacking employment. You could also sign up at healthcare.gov.
Taxes under the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) are composed of the old-age, survivors, and disability insurance taxes, also known as Social Security taxes, and the hospital insurance taxes, also known as Medicare taxes. Different rates apply for these taxes.
Social Security and Medicare withholding rates
The current tax rate for Social Security is 6.2% for the employer and 6.2% for the employee, or 12.4% total. The current rate for Medicare is 1.45% for the employer and 1.45% for the employee, or 2.9% total. Refer to Publication 15 (Circular E), Employer's Tax Guide for more information.
Additional Medicare tax withholding rate
Additional Medicare tax applies to an individual's Medicare wages that exceed a threshold amount based on the taxpayer's filing status. Employers are responsible for withholding the 0.9% Additional Medicare tax on an individual's wages paid in excess of $200,000 in a calendar year, without regard to filing status. An employer is required to begin withholding Additional Medicare tax in the pay period in which it pays wages in excess of $200,000 to an employee and continue to withhold it each pay period until the end of the calendar year. There's no employer match for Additional Medicare tax. For more information, see the Instructions for Form 8959 and Questions and answers for the Additional Medicare tax.
Wage base limits
Only the Social Security tax has a wage base limit. The wage base limit is the maximum wage that's subject to the tax for that year. For earnings in 2024, this base is $168,600. Refer to "What's New" in Publication 15 for the current wage limit for Social Security wages.
There's no wage base limit for Medicare tax. All covered wages are subject to Medicare tax.
Make this 4.5% and stop having insurance companies. It will be a net gain when i dont pay insurance premiums and my employer doesnt either.
My company is probably payint 12k a year for my health insurance premiums, im paying 6k. Thats 18k.
I dont make 200k a year but I would need to in order for the breakeven point where my private insurance healthcare premiums out of pocket would be the same as the increase in taxes Id pay. My employer would be coming out ahead up until they paid me 400k. Not to mention i could have limited to no out of pocket expenses. Id still be way ahead, and even if I wasnt I would be all for this because if I lost my job I wouldnt be fucked with COBRA or no insurance. Btw the public exchanges are terrible. You get horrible rates as an individual from insurance companies. This all should be handled under one bloc to reduce cost.
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On November 09 2024 04:15 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 03:18 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 09 2024 03:03 ChristianS wrote:On November 09 2024 02:30 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 09 2024 01:51 ChristianS wrote:On November 09 2024 01:18 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 09 2024 00:11 ChristianS wrote:On November 08 2024 10:17 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 08 2024 10:11 ChristianS wrote:On November 08 2024 10:02 GreenHorizons wrote:[quote] You'll notice in that post I don't anticipate you defending or apologizing for anything Trump does either. What I'm describing is a bipartisan mass deportation aka ethnic cleansing effort that would be rationalized by you and other lib/Dems, much like you all just did with your/Harris/Biden's support of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. To ChristianS point when GENOCIDE doesn't pass for "consequences bad enough it’s worth abandoning that first principle (the one about the president being whoever won the election)." it begs the question of what is? So far you guys have given me nothing, so I have to believe Trump and Democrats enslaving 10,000,000 immigrants wouldn't be it either. If the question is “what would the circumstances be under which I would take up arms against my government?” I hope you’ll appreciate that I don’t take the question lightly and don’t necessarily have a comprehensive answer for you right this moment, but I’m certainly pondering what exactly the answer might be. I’m not sure if that’s the question you’re asking, though. "Take up arms" is a bit dramatic, I'm at "what would the circumstances be under which I would join a revolutionary socialist organization" (or "I would read like 50% of a book by a socialist", edit: or just "I would stop voting for Democrats") and have been for YEARS waiting on you guys to have an answer to where you draw the line if not genocide for just that much. I’m imagining various scenarios about Trump carrying out some or all of the atrocities he promised to commit, and your question is “how bad would that have to get for you to agree never to vote for Democrats again?” Do you get how it doesn’t seem like a responsive question? If I promised that right this moment, it wouldn’t change the path a bit because I’m just one CA voter, and if voters en masse made the same promise, surely it would just embolden Republicans to commit atrocities without fear of electoral consequence. The obvious conclusion is that no amount of promising not to vote for Democrats is capable of stopping Republicans from committing atrocities, no? You had to skip "what would the circumstances be under which I would join a revolutionary socialist organization" to get to the edit about voting. You should have started there. But the “how bad would that have to get for you to agree never to vote for Democrats again?” besides being a bit of a transmutation, is a decades old question that precedes us. You speak to the timeliness as if I haven't been putting that question in one form or another to you and libs/Dems here for years without you all ever having anything resembling an answer. Most people just lob childish insults, or talk about any inane/bad faith thing (even on reasonable topics) they can with the oBlade types because as we know, they can't help themselves. You and the person you tried to elect President had the chance to discuss ending the enslavement of your fellow Californians and neither of you mentioned it 1 time afaict. I don't think people appreciate how fucked up that is on so many levels. I don't mean that as a personal indictment of you (I absofuckinglutely do of Harris), but of such deep systemic problems that it probably barely crossed your radar. It'd be bad enough if it was passing despite Harris NEVER mentioning how she was voting on ending the enslavement of her fellow Californians (let alone pushing for it), but it is failing. That makes it so much more unforgivably bad. + Show Spoiler +Maybe it would be helpful to pivot a bit to a related subject: a word socialists often like to use is “revisionism.” As I understand it, it dates back to a late 19th century German socialist named Eduard Bernstein, and the concept is “we don’t need a revolution, we’ll just form political parties, win votes, and enact legislation to bring about socialism.” Socialists don’t exactly use the term as a compliment; indeed, it’s the punchline to the joke about socialists that Drone posted a while back: + Show Spoiler [Drone’s joke] +There's also this joke, which comes in various ways - just copy pasting the first one I found: Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "The proletariat love you. Do you believe in the proletariat?"
He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a communist or a socialist?" He said, "A communist." I said, "Me, too! Marxist-Leninist or anarchist?" He said, "Marxist-Leninist." I said, "Me, too! What kind of thought?" He said, "Trotskyist." I said, "Me, too! Intersectional Trotskyist or Classical Trotskyist?" He said, "Intersectional Trotskyist." I said, "Me, too! Socialist Action (United States), Socialist Alternative (United States), or Socialist Equality Party (United States)?"
He said, "Socialist Action (United States)." I said, "Me, too! Socialist Resurgence splinter group, or Socialist Action mainline?" He said, "Socialist Resurgence splinter group." I said, "Me, too!"
"Socialist Resurgence committee of 2019, or Socialist Resurgence committee of 2021?" He said, "Socialist Resurgence committee of 2021." I said, "Die, bourgeois revisionist!" And I pushed him over. Lenin spends no small amount of time in What is to be Done tearing into Bernstein and Revisionism, and yet for all his sarcasm and scorn, I have trouble enumerating what exactly would be his explanation of why socialism cannot be enacted by electoral campaigns in a liberal democracy. He’s not a vanguardist, he doesn’t think the proles are too dumb to get it and you need a small cadre of radicals to stage a coup and give them their dictatorship against their will. So if you’re going to have to convince the masses of your program, why would it be an unacceptable route to elect representatives who pass bills and amendments? To be clear, I’m not asking this because I think the conclusion is wrong. Now especially, but even after 2020 I didn’t have a ton of faith in our democratic process as an effective engine for change or political decision-making. Kwark et al. are going on about how dumb it is that voters would blame Biden for inflation and such when it’s trivial to analyze why inflation happened and whether Biden did a good job combating it; but the fact remains, voters overwhelmingly make decisions on the basis of those kinds of factors. Where can you go with that besides questioning the premise of government based on elections decided by this electorate? If a fairly simple analysis like “why does inflation happen?” is way beyond what we can expect of the average voter, I certainly don’t think you can expect a majority of them to undergo the kind of revolutionary socialist self-education you’re begging everyone in the thread to find time for. But… then what? Are we back to vanguardism? Lenin eventually got somewhere with this stuff, but I’m not particularly thrilled to follow the path of early 20th century Russia (neither how they got to revolution, nor where they when after it). I want to keep this manageable so the rest can wait. Let's take back a step and focus on "what would the circumstances be under which I would join a revolutionary socialist organization". I obviously favor Revolutionary Socialism (as developed primarily by Black radicals mostly after WWII) but how about just a socialist org? We could include DSA which still does plenty of voting for Democrats? I get people are busy, but "democracy" in any meaningful sense of the word isn't just voting every couple years based on a party you have no influence on. + Show Spoiler +I mean, I guess the generic answer is “people (including myself) will sign onto a political project if they think it seeks better outcomes than the alternatives and has a reasonable chance of achieving them.” When exactly to focus on ideology (“seeks better outcomes”) and when to focus on efficacy (“has a reasonable chance of achieving them”) is a constant dilemma with no simple solution, and different posters might place their objections to socialist organizations on one or the other (or both), but I’m guessing for most folks around here, they think revolutionary socialists have almost no chance of ever taking power in America (extremely low on the efficacy measure), and if they did, they worry all the quoting Lenin and Stalin and Mao is an indication they would institute some kind of authoritarian regime (presumably low on the ideology measure as well).
But that’s me guessing at what everybody else thinks. For myself I guess I do figure the socialists tend to have somewhat idealistic/naive conceptions about affecting political change (i.e. potentially low on efficacy) but all the hard-nosed cynical Democratic political operatives seem pretty fucking incompetent, too. Feels like nobody knows anything about how to make things happen, and the actual outcomes are decided mostly by chance or circumstance. This is what Democrats robbing their supporters of the actual history of change does smh. Most of what we take for granted today (weekends, overtime, not being locked inside burning buildings, etc) that was achieved (mostly in the first half of the 20th century and before) was won by socialist guided organized labor engaging in organized mass civil disobedience. Democrats are functionally the people that shepherded people away from the functioning socialist approach to change and toward the lib/Dem one you recognize is shit now. On ideology I just don’t feel like I understand what socialists want enough to even say anything conclusively about it. + Show Spoiler +Certainly the realities of Soviet or Maoist rule seem pretty grim, maybe less so than the monarchist or colonialist regimes they were meant to replace but not obviously superior to liberal democracies, either. But also those were/are pretty much entirely undemocratic regimes, and socialist revolutionaries in the US always seem to think their system will be democratic. Which leads me to the question you decided to put off until later: how exactly are you supposed to get widespread support for a program that requires so much challenging self-education, and if you could, why would you need to overthrow liberal democratic governments just to establish a new system that’s apparently still democratic? Like, why are we even still talking about my vote? + Show Spoiler +I didn’t vote for Biden in the primary and it made no difference. I did vote for Kamala in the general and it made no difference. I’m well aware my vote is insignificant, I mostly only bothered to fill the thing out for some of the propositions that apparently are also gonna fail (fucking hell, this state). You and I seem to be in agreement that meaningful change is only gonna come from non-ballot-related activities, so why do we keep talking about whether I bubble in that first question or not? Why do you even care? Same reason as Kwark and the rest of the Harris/Democrat supporters: On November 08 2024 22:53 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 08 2024 15:37 KwarK wrote:On November 08 2024 15:31 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 08 2024 14:04 KwarK wrote:On November 08 2024 13:04 Salazarz wrote:On November 08 2024 11:46 Razyda wrote:
[quote]
I just quote this post, but GH to put last few pages of your posts in context of your usual stance:
Liberals will descend to fascism - now you advocating for Democrats to become a fascist to stop Trump.
Lesser evilism = bad, but Democrats becoming fascist is better than Trump becoming president, therefore in this case lesser evilism good.
Sort of makes sense - you can then claim "told you Democrats will become fascists".
You come across much more dictatorial than Trump ever did (bolded parts). You are not afraid that Trump can become dictator, you are angry that you wont (or whatever Secretary you happened to be infatuated with).
Arresting a guy for leading a coup is not fascism, it's just following the laws. Plenty of randos in the crowd that stormed the capitol got criminal charges. The way I see it, there's a huge disconnect in messaging and actions of the Dems. Either Trump is all the things they say he is, and then them not dealing with him is a massive failure to uphold the law and security of the country; or he is not, in fact, all the things they say he is and they're just trying to push people into voting for them because 'big bad orange will get ya' otherwise. It's the first. They trusted in institutions that couldn't be relied upon. Sooo the same thing they are doing by handing Trump/Project 2025 control of the most lethal military in the world? That' should work out well /s We can ignore all the warnings people got that this would happen, and just go with "fool me once, shame on you, fool me 542 times..." Also, to be fair, the institution of the Supreme Court did give Democrats the power to hold him accountable. Unfortunately, Democrats are even less reliable than Trump's Supreme Court. Dunno why you keep holding this stuff against me as if I'm running the Democrats. ...supporting them. They ostensibly derive their power from you and voters like you. From a liberal democratic pov, you and people like you need to extract better than that from them. Alternatively, you and voters like yourself need to extract them and replace them with people that will do better than make the same mistake for the 543rd time of trusting institutions and norms to control Trump/Project 2025's openly fascist ambitions. I'd prefer you and voters like yourself just join revolutionary socialist orgs and go from there, but if you all insist on keeping your lib-Dem politics, the WORLD needs you to demand better from your leaders RIGHT NOW, EN MASSE, in every venue possible. Which ties into the issue with you and other libs/Dems not having a line for when you'd have to stop supporting Democrats since clearly even genocide doesn't cross it. On November 08 2024 10:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 08 2024 08:52 KwarK wrote:On November 08 2024 06:45 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 08 2024 05:33 WombaT wrote:
If the Democrats framed Trump as a shitbag who’d shortly fuck off, let’s figure out some messaging to counter him, that’s one thing. Kinda my position
But they want to simultaneously frame him as a Fascist threat to democracy, while also doing nothing to block his ascent to power What is terrifying to me is that libs/Dems are just going to retcon the "Trump is a fascist that will destroy democracy" thing, as we see happening now. Then insist no matter how authoritarian Trump gets, that he's not actually a fascist dictator, because then electoralism wouldn't be worth shit and they are lesser evil absolutists. They'll be the one's explaining " actually this bipartisan mass deportation bill is a win because we got some more weapons for Israel and Ukraine!" Then " Oh, turns out there's no where that will take the ~10,000,000+ people we Democrats and Republicans rounded up, guess we'll have to make these camps a bit more permanent" Then " Oh you know who could do the work? These people illegals we rounded up! It's okay if they don't want to, we can legally force them" and so on....That's just one of the lib/Dem to fascism examples but there's more. Before anyone tells me "oh Democrats wouldn't let Trump enslave undocumented immigrants, put them in work camps, and violently punish those that refuse". Genocidal Democrats are already building the cop cities across the country that could fill/staff the prison camps while actively voting against ending slavery in California in 2024 (Harris NEVER mentioning this being on her ballot is actually unbelievable to me). FOH. This is all happening right in front of our faces and libs/Dems are just like "man this hot tub is nice, smells a bit like spices though...". I don't anticipate defending or apologizing for anything Trump does, though it's possible he might be tricked into something good. I'm still pissed at him for shit from 2016. Though one thing I will say for him is that he's never hidden what he is. Even back then he was openly stating that he'll accept the results of the election if he wins and refuse to accept them if he loses. The scorpion never claimed he was anything other than a scorpion. I have more venom and contempt for those who decided that they didn't have enough scorpions in their lives. ... What I'm describing is a bipartisan mass deportation aka ethnic cleansing effort that would be rationalized by you and other lib/Dems, much like you all just did with your/Harris/Biden's support of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. To ChristianS point, when GENOCIDE doesn't pass for "consequences bad enough it’s worth abandoning that first principle (the one about the president being whoever won the election)." it begs the question of what is? So far you guys have given me nothing, so I have to believe Trump and Democrats enslaving 10,000,000 immigrants wouldn't be it either. You voting for someone that couldn't even mention that there was an opportunity to stop enslaving her fellow Californians from her home state when the whole country was looking at her, is emblematic of how problematic that is. + Show Spoiler +Sure, the Democratic Party derives political power and legitimacy from people like me or Kwark or DPB being willing to vote for them. The US government derives power and legitimacy from our labor, tax dollars, etc. If we were to stop being willing to vote for them, they’d pivot to whatever position allowed them to maximize their support from whoever continued to engage with the political system; if we were to stop working or paying taxes the US government would pivot to deriving its power and legitimacy from whoever continued to engage with the economic system.
You’re fundamentally opposed to making moral arguments on a “compared to the alternative” basis, but personally I’m going to be more interested in plans which achieve better outcomes, which requires choosing among available alternatives. Political abstention is one of those available alternatives but I have yet to hear even a theoretical mechanism by which it would achieve better outcomes for anyone. + Show Spoiler + If I didn’t give a shit about achieving better outcomes for people, and just to keep my name or reputation or immortal soul unsullied by association with horrible stuff, I can see how political abstention would help me. But when this stuff has real, enormous consequences for other people’s lives it’s hard for me to feel good about just trying to not get my hands dirty.
But anyway, haven’t we been here before? Haven’t we already done this? I don’t want to talk about trolley problems, particularly at a moment when it’s already clear to both of us that neither of us have any influence over whether the lever gets pulled or not anyway. Like, I agree that Kamala should have voiced support for the amendment, and more generally that CA liberals are responsible for a state that continues to enact regressive and exploitative policies while pretending everything would be progressive and wonderful if national politics went their way. I have no control over that. Supposedly leftists have proposed courses of action outside electoral politics that might ameliorate things, why don’t we talk about those? Doesn’t that sound more productive? + Show Spoiler +"Not voting for Democrats" Isn't political abstention. I know you know that and strawman it that way disingenuously on purpose. You should stop that. Man, “political abstention [from national electoral contests such as the recent presidential election]” is a lot to type! I write my posts on my phone! But yes, I certainly understand that you don’t advocate abstention from all political activity, not even from all electoral politics, and did not mean to imply otherwise. Would “national electoral abstention” be a better shorthand? + Show Spoiler +Or would that still be a strawman since you don’t necessarily advocate abstention from all national electoral contests, just most of them in the current political environment?
No, I voted for president days ago.
Show nested quote +You should have some control over that. There are people that go to the Democrat meetings and make the policies from the local to the national level (though for Democrats it typically flows the other way nowadays). That could be you just as easily as anyone else (but for the whole Hamster Wheel + Show Spoiler +1. There's a problem
2. Politicians won't fix it
3. Need to replace the politicians with ones that will
4. Can't replace the politicians because of how the system works
5. Need to fix the system
6. Politicians won't fix it (because it benefits them)
7. Repeat ad nauseam. problem of electoralism) Just to be sure I’m understanding you right: you want me to work at becoming one of the movers and shakers setting Democratic Party policies? Work my way up from the inside, ingratiate myself to party leaders, win some influence and use it to change things from the inside? That sounds like the kind of thing you’d dismiss as misguided attempts at reforming the current system + Show Spoiler +, and Lenin would dismiss as Revisionism. Surely you’d say I dedicate my energies to something more revolutionary ?
Show nested quote +As to talking about "proposed courses of action outside electoral politics that might ameliorate things" being more productive, it is with socialists. It Is with (edit:most some)reasonable social democrats. Not so much with libs/Dems that are primarily just looking to shit on them in order to rationalize their continued support of genocide and the rest. So you’re trying to convince everybody to be socialists, but you don’t want to talk about all the good stuff socialists can do except with other socialists?
+ Show Spoiler +Maybe part of the problem here is that the only correct answer to “how should I engage with national politics?” is “Don’t!” but this is fundamentally a thread about US national politics. You’re apparently doing a lot of good engagement with local organizations on local problems, but you don’t want to talk about it here because it’s local stuff nobody in the thread has reason to know or care about. Meanwhile what you actually think the rest of us should do is similarly engage with local organizations on local problems, but you can’t tell us how to do that because you’re not from the same place we’re from. I’m not sure what the answer to that problem is, though; I can think about how to have solidarity with my coworkers but it’s not especially useful to discuss in the thread.
That's why I've been telling you to join a socialist org (could even be DSA, very easy to find/join) for years. They are doing local things, with local orgs in your area, tackling local problems. That's how you do it, and I've been telling you specifically (along with everyone else) that for years. The reasonable conclusion for me to draw is that it's one of those “Don't tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value.” type things where you can say opposing genocide/slavery matters to you, but your "budget" (be it time, money, effort, voting, etc) is telling me otherwise.
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Norway28592 Posts
Universal or public health care isn't a panacea for all health problems or obesity, obviously. It's not like the US is the only country in the world with the problem that people are overweight, and frankly, there are probably other explanations outside the health care system - specifically - that cause the difference in degree. Cities being designed for driving instead of walking seems like a pretty big one: They found that adults who live in walkable neighborhoods were 1.5 times more likely to engage in adequate levels of physical activity, and 0.76 times less likely to have obesity, compared to adults living in neighborhoods with low walkability.
The other major one is food. Looking solely at caloric intake, the US is #2 on the list for 2018, food energy intake per capita by country, and couple that with the sedentiary lifestyle, and yea, no shocker.
The difference - as alluded to by several other posters - is that a country which pays for the health care of its inhabitants - where health care thus is an expenditure, and not a source of profit - is greatly incentivized to try to make some efforts towards preventing health issues rather than treating them, as that is a much less costly way of doing it. Meanwhile a profit-driven system will have actors involved who benefit from the population being unhealthy. Now, I'll be honest and say that I don't have intricate data on this, and the following is more of a 'it is my impression that' - coupled with 'I'm too lazy to really study it in depth at the moment but damn this is kinda interesting to me' - but it is my impression that the big american health care companies will in at least some instances have shareholders/parent companies (I don't even know the terminology of this stuff tbh) who are also involved in, for example, the beverage industry, who have lobbied against, for example, sugar taxes. Kinda like how the opioid epidemic has been driven by profit-based health care benefiting from people being addicted to opiates, a profit-based health care system has perverse incentives to have an unhealthy population, and without being all conspiratorial, lobbyism in the US seems like a pretty tangled somewhat clandestine web of different actors who don't always have the best interests of the public in mind.
So it's complicated, and it's not that 'public health care' by itself solves everything - but a profit-based system does, kinda by default, offer some perverse incentives compared to one run by the government. And while the competition inherent to capitalism can sometimes produce great results (hey, I'll admit that even as a self-described socialist), the combination of a) profit-driven b) impossible to opt out of and c) naturally monopolistic (in many cases your option of hospitals to go for treatment is 1) tends to create situations where capitalism at the very least requires some pretty strict regulation.
Whereas if health care is government funded, the approach to health care will logically drive itself more towards a holistic solution of all sorts of prevention-based incentives or disincentives because these are less costly than treating health care problems is - for example through adding sin taxes, or building bike lanes and publicly available exercising options, or mandating/incentivizing work places to offer some exercise options during working hours.
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On November 09 2024 04:00 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:
Gunshot wounds can't even be close to obesity.
Traffic accidents are probably a waaaaaaaaaaaaaay bigger cost and it's a better example anyway. Most european countries have much longer driver education and stricter tests than the US and we spend a lot of time building as safe roads as possible and are also harder on drunk driving.
Always shocking how many Americans have been in traffic accidents. Not one of my friends have been in even a fender bender.
Oh yeah, not suggesting it is close to Obesity. But I would guess the cost to the healthcare system (not to mention lack of productivity) out weighs the positive economic benefit of domestic gun sales.
I would also agree on the car accidents.
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Norway28592 Posts
On November 09 2024 04:41 L_Master wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 02:54 Luolis wrote:On November 09 2024 02:52 L_Master wrote:On November 09 2024 02:29 Luolis wrote:On November 09 2024 02:06 WombaT wrote:On November 09 2024 02:01 L_Master wrote:On November 09 2024 01:32 WombaT wrote:On November 09 2024 01:29 oBlade wrote:On November 09 2024 01:17 Simberto wrote:On November 09 2024 01:09 oBlade wrote:
[quote]
I am not making the claim that one or the other system is "better." There is no purely private system, including the US, because every country has a government, making it at least that much public. Therefore I preemptively didn't answer on the assumption that any country I name, you will simply go "no that's not private in the right way" and put a goalpost somewhere else.
The significance of your graph is limited. No other country delivers half of the world's medical research and advances. No other country is as wildly unhealthy, right? China is perhaps similarly unhealthy? If you go by obesity, and the other relevant similarity is pure size (of the nation I mean, not obesity-wise). Is China's system better? The spending is below average. Is India's best? They're equally massive but spend the least. There's Indonesia down there also.
Like you post a graph saying the US spends more, which everybody knows, but you're not comparing it to the US. For all you know the excess could all be Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA. Looks to me like the dark blue part is the main factor. That wouldn't be an issue with the privateness of the system. If every other country does a thing better than you, why not learn from them and steal one of their systems? If Medicare, Medicaid and the VA are so bad, just steal what Switzerland is doing. Or Japan. Or the Netherlands. Or Denmark. Or whatever. There are dozens of systems out there which deliver radically better than the US system, and they all have one thing in common: They are universal healthcare systems. I don't really care about the details within the US system, because i don't explicitly know what Medicaid, Medicare or the VA do exactly. What i do know is that as a whole, the US system is just bad, (except for the superrich of course, it provides quality care for those who don't care about the price). My assumption here was that "Medicare for all" basically means "We want universal healthcare in the US in some way". Then how could you know the Netherlands would not be more expensive and worse outcomes if implemented in the US? On November 09 2024 01:17 Simberto wrote:
Meanwhile, there are zero countries which do private/non-universal healthcare which do better than the US. You couldn't even name one. If you define "better" a certain way, there will be no countries that do healthcare better than the US. If you define "better" another way, there will be private and public countries that do it better. If I then name one of them and you change the definition of "better" after the fact it will have been a waste. Explain what you mean by "better" because you showed a graph of cost which means India must have the best most affordable healthcare in the world. What are we valuing, with what weights, when we say one of these is "better." On November 09 2024 01:17 Simberto wrote:
But instead of seeing that and recognizing that you should really, really just move to a universal healthcare system, you are so blinded by ideology that you think that you really should do more private stuff instead, because that has been working so well so far. And trying to deflect to other reasons is just another weird push for US exceptionalism. The US is not so unique that it cannot compare with and learn from other countries. Sure I'm open to moving to a universal healthcare system if it's the best option. How would that shift occur and what problems unique to the US that cause its bar on that graph to be 50% higher than Switzerland's would it specifically fix? What would convince you a universal healthcare system is the best option? Well, the first thing that pops out is "best". Best for whom? Under what circumstances? Or is the argument that on every single vector for every single individual it is best, which seems implausible? If that isn't defined clearly, we can have crazy arguments fighting with imagined shadows of the other persons position. That aside, assuming a clear definition of best, for me it's the only thing that matters: Results. And right now, the results look pretty favorable to universal. How could those results look even better? Need more test cases with very homogenous populations for me. US racial demographics are very, very different to other countries listed. If you start getting parts of the US doing universal and other parts doing our current system, and the universal keeps crushing....then it goes from "Yea, universal looks pretty good" to "Universal GOAT status" for me. Why do populations have to be homogenous? Certain ethnic groups do have slightly different medical needs, but those aren’t giant hurdles You can make very simple, IMO correct arguments that certain political systems work best, or less well depending on how politically and culturally homogenous a nation is. I think it’s a much harder sell with healthcare It's just the classic "black people are ruining our country" argument that he's trying to mask as being rational and somewhat politically correct. Except the country isn't "being ruined". And you're right, men like Thomas Sowell are just total human pieces of garbage and we should just deport all of them. eyeroll.jpeg In your own words, tell me what homogenity has anything to do with the efficiency of different healthcare systems. If you mean tell you why I think it *might*, then both genetic factors in longevity and then differences in personality. E.g. less impulsive -> less risk taking behavior -> plausibly longer lifespan. My eye roll is for the out of nowhere value judgement in there. I think you’re implicitly assigning “good” or “bad” with certain differences in personality to come to that idea. I can imagine you going “oh he thinks certain races are more or less impulsive and thus they are bad”. Maybe I’m wrong, if so apologies. In either case, I find that statement nonsense. I see tradeoffs in personality traits. High impulsivity/low conscientiousness for example might take more risks and engage in certain harmful behaviors more often…but flip side is those also tend to be the traits of brilliant people that take the crazy risks in entrepreneurship or research that push or society forward. Or take trait neuroticism. High neuroticism sounds “bad” to most people. Like oh you’re just more susceptible to negative emotions than other people. But when you consider the superorganism it’s beneficial. You’re higher neuroticism people are your canaries in the coal mine. They are the people that are first to notice things getting bad, and make noise that gets everybody else aware. You’re low neuroticism would just go “it’s fine” as things go wrong around them until they hit a point where they realize “oh shit were fucked” but now it’s too late.
Considering how this part of the discussion started with you stating that health care went to shit around the time more asians and hispanics started living in the US, what you should do is demonstrate that Asians and Hispanics cost the health care system more than people of other races.
I have a relevant link for you: The estimated age-standardized total health care spending per person in 2016 was $7649 (95% UI, $6129-$8814) for American Indian and Alaska Native (non-Hispanic) individuals; $4692 (95% UI, $4068-$5202) for Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (non-Hispanic) individuals; $7361 (95% UI, $6917-$7797) for Black (non-Hispanic) individuals; $6025 (95% UI, $5703-$6373) for Hispanic individuals; $9276 (95% UI, $8066-$10 601) for individuals categorized as multiple races (non-Hispanic); and $8141 (95% UI, $8038-$8258) for White (non-Hispanic) individuals, who accounted for an estimated 72% (95% UI, 71%-73%) of health care spending. After adjusting for population size and age, White individuals received an estimated 15% (95% UI, 13%-17%; P < .001) more spending on ambulatory care than the all-population mean. Black (non-Hispanic) individuals received an estimated 26% (95% UI, 19%-32%; P < .001) less spending than the all-population mean on ambulatory care but received 19% (95% UI, 3%-32%; P = .02) more on inpatient and 12% (95% UI, 4%-24%; P = .04) more on emergency department care. Hispanic individuals received an estimated 33% (95% UI, 26%-37%; P < .001) less spending per person on ambulatory care than the all-population mean. Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (non-Hispanic) individuals received less spending than the all-population mean on all types of care except dental
So clearly that argument is just utter bullshit. I'll grant you that there can be elements where a more homogenuous society outperforms a less homogenuous one, but the notion that american health care costs are caused by immigration from Asia and Latin America (which are the groups that increased at the point you said health care started going bad) isn't grounded in reality. Tbh this, to me, sounds like something I'd expect to find at tylervigen's great webpage, next to 'the number of secretaries in alaska correlates to the distance between jupiter and the sun'.
(+ Show Spoiler +)
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The case for a social healthcare system is not that it magically eliminates all bad medical outcomes, but what it does eliminate are medical bankruptcies. Seeing a doctor more may not bring you to perfect health, but it's something you should be able to do without invoking financial ruin upon yourself.
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L_Master
When you start talking about "Genetic factors" my ears perk up and think you are slowly being radicalized by some people online or something. Combined with some of your other posts you may wanna evaluate your social media/podcast/youtube intake. Not saying thats happening but there are some of the early warning signs.
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On November 09 2024 05:02 Liquid`Drone wrote:Universal or public health care isn't a panacea for all health problems or obesity, obviously. It's not like the US is the only country in the world with the problem that people are overweight, and frankly, there are probably other explanations outside the health care system - specifically - that cause the difference in degree. Cities being designed for driving instead of walking seems like a pretty big one: They found that adults who live in walkable neighborhoods were 1.5 times more likely to engage in adequate levels of physical activity, and 0.76 times less likely to have obesity, compared to adults living in neighborhoods with low walkability.The other major one is food. Looking solely at caloric intake, the US is #2 on the list for 2018, food energy intake per capita by country, and couple that with the sedentiary lifestyle, and yea, no shocker. The difference - as alluded to by several other posters - is that a country which pays for the health care of its inhabitants - where health care thus is an expenditure, and not a source of profit - is greatly incentivized to try to make some efforts towards preventing health issues rather than treating them, as that is a much less costly way of doing it. Meanwhile a profit-driven system will have actors involved who benefit from the population being unhealthy. Now, I'll be honest and say that I don't have intricate data on this, and the following is more of a 'it is my impression that' - coupled with 'I'm too lazy to really study it in depth at the moment but damn this is kinda interesting to me' - but it is my impression that the big american health care companies will in at least some instances have shareholders/parent companies (I don't even know the terminology of this stuff tbh) who are also involved in, for example, the beverage industry, who have lobbied against, for example, sugar taxes. Kinda like how the opioid epidemic has been driven by profit-based health care benefiting from people being addicted to opiates, a profit-based health care system has perverse incentives to have an unhealthy population, and without being all conspiratorial, lobbyism in the US seems like a pretty tangled somewhat clandestine web of different actors who don't always have the best interests of the public in mind. So it's complicated, and it's not that 'public health care' by itself solves everything - but a profit-based system does, kinda by default, offer some perverse incentives compared to one run by the government. And while the competition inherent to capitalism can sometimes produce great results (hey, I'll admit that even as a self-described socialist), the combination of a) profit-driven b) impossible to opt out of and c) naturally monopolistic (in many cases your option of hospitals to go for treatment is 1) tends to create situations where capitalism at the very least requires some pretty strict regulation. Whereas if health care is government funded, the approach to health care will logically drive itself more towards a holistic solution of all sorts of prevention-based incentives or disincentives because these are less costly than treating health care problems is - for example through adding sin taxes, or building bike lanes and publicly available exercising options, or mandating/incentivizing work places to offer some exercise options during working hours.
I'm not convinced that is true. Even in the US the state pays a large share of healthcare costs. Since employers pay a share of the insurance premium they have an incentive to lower healthcare costs as well.
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I'm actually still personally wrestling with the fact that a person like Donald Trump got voted in. With a majority of the vote, no electoral college bullshit.... Over half of the voting population of the US thinks a convicted felon, rapist, conman, reality tv-star.... .... that can't string 5 sentences together is the figurehead (again).
I mean... There is plenty of bullshit going around in tiny switzerland but this?... How do you cope? I couldn't....
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On November 09 2024 05:02 Liquid`Drone wrote:Universal or public health care isn't a panacea for all health problems or obesity, obviously. It's not like the US is the only country in the world with the problem that people are overweight, and frankly, there are probably other explanations outside the health care system - specifically - that cause the difference in degree. Cities being designed for driving instead of walking seems like a pretty big one: They found that adults who live in walkable neighborhoods were 1.5 times more likely to engage in adequate levels of physical activity, and 0.76 times less likely to have obesity, compared to adults living in neighborhoods with low walkability.The other major one is food. Looking solely at caloric intake, the US is #2 on the list for 2018, food energy intake per capita by country, and couple that with the sedentiary lifestyle, and yea, no shocker. The difference - as alluded to by several other posters - is that a country which pays for the health care of its inhabitants - where health care thus is an expenditure, and not a source of profit - is greatly incentivized to try to make some efforts towards preventing health issues rather than treating them, as that is a much less costly way of doing it. Meanwhile a profit-driven system will have actors involved who benefit from the population being unhealthy. Now, I'll be honest and say that I don't have intricate data on this, and the following is more of a 'it is my impression that' - coupled with 'I'm too lazy to really study it in depth at the moment but damn this is kinda interesting to me' - but it is my impression that the big american health care companies will in at least some instances have shareholders/parent companies (I don't even know the terminology of this stuff tbh) who are also involved in, for example, the beverage industry, who have lobbied against, for example, sugar taxes. Kinda like how the opioid epidemic has been driven by profit-based health care benefiting from people being addicted to opiates, a profit-based health care system has perverse incentives to have an unhealthy population, and without being all conspiratorial, lobbyism in the US seems like a pretty tangled somewhat clandestine web of different actors who don't always have the best interests of the public in mind. So it's complicated, and it's not that 'public health care' by itself solves everything - but a profit-based system does, kinda by default, offer some perverse incentives compared to one run by the government. And while the competition inherent to capitalism can sometimes produce great results (hey, I'll admit that even as a self-described socialist), the combination of a) profit-driven b) impossible to opt out of and c) naturally monopolistic (in many cases your option of hospitals to go for treatment is 1) tends to create situations where capitalism at the very least requires some pretty strict regulation. Whereas if health care is government funded, the approach to health care will logically drive itself more towards a holistic solution of all sorts of prevention-based incentives or disincentives because these are less costly than treating health care problems is - for example through adding sin taxes, or building bike lanes and publicly available exercising options, or mandating/incentivizing work places to offer some exercise options during working hours.
Blackrock. Vanguard. State Street. They seem to have their fingers in everything.....
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On November 09 2024 04:45 Sadist wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 03:06 oBlade wrote:On November 09 2024 02:49 Sadist wrote:
Oblade you can check for what procedures cost in other countries.
MRIs for example. How about heart surgery? Everyone knows the US system is corrupt. Its nothing to do with Americans being more expensive to treat, we pay more and get less.
Are you telling me it costs more to get heart surgery at a hospital that was more expensive to build, staffed by people who make more per year, equipped with stuff that costs more to develop, paid for by insurance pooled with people who are 45% obese, who are more likely to have heart conditions, meaning have more heart conditions? The US system is corrupt so we should entrust it to a government who lets doctors ship every grandparent with a cough to get an MRI to cash in on the free government bucks. Okay. If price transparency is your thing, Republicans have pushed for it. On November 09 2024 02:49 Sadist wrote:
Health insurance sucks, what we need is Health Care. Its not insurance if you have a chronic condition.
Medicare is not bankrupting the country either. We need to fix it and let Medicare negotiate prices if a drug maker wants to enter the US market. Medicare is $900 billion a year that's not just pharmaceuticals. On November 09 2024 02:49 Sadist wrote:
Also we already take care of the most expensive people anyway. Triple the tax for medicare and id still come out way ahead compared to insurance. Also we could finally divorce health insurance from employment which should be a crime. What do you mean "triple the tax" for Medicare?On November 09 2024 03:02 Sadist wrote:
So for my european friends, not only does it suck to lose your job or be laid off in the US, you also lose your health insurance. You get the "great"option of keeping your insurance through COBRA but you have to pay your employer premium out of pocket (which most people dont even know about ) but its typically in the range of $500-$1000 depending on if you have a family. This is in addition to what you normally pay (i pay somewhere around $450 for my wife and myself). So not only do you get fucked because you are out of work and if you are lucky you get unemployment, you get fucked by being out of pocket for your health insurance to the tune of $1000-$1500 a month. Thats not even counting copays, deductables, etc.
What you described is not a unique function - in a country with public healthcare your employer is paying a premium/tax while employing you that you become responsible for if you want to have healthcare while lacking employment. You could also sign up at healthcare.gov. Taxes under the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) are composed of the old-age, survivors, and disability insurance taxes, also known as Social Security taxes, and the hospital insurance taxes, also known as Medicare taxes. Different rates apply for these taxes.
Social Security and Medicare withholding rates
The current tax rate for Social Security is 6.2% for the employer and 6.2% for the employee, or 12.4% total. The current rate for Medicare is 1.45% for the employer and 1.45% for the employee, or 2.9% total. Refer to Publication 15 (Circular E), Employer's Tax Guide for more information.
Additional Medicare tax withholding rate
Additional Medicare tax applies to an individual's Medicare wages that exceed a threshold amount based on the taxpayer's filing status. Employers are responsible for withholding the 0.9% Additional Medicare tax on an individual's wages paid in excess of $200,000 in a calendar year, without regard to filing status. An employer is required to begin withholding Additional Medicare tax in the pay period in which it pays wages in excess of $200,000 to an employee and continue to withhold it each pay period until the end of the calendar year. There's no employer match for Additional Medicare tax. For more information, see the Instructions for Form 8959 and Questions and answers for the Additional Medicare tax.
Wage base limits
Only the Social Security tax has a wage base limit. The wage base limit is the maximum wage that's subject to the tax for that year. For earnings in 2024, this base is $168,600. Refer to "What's New" in Publication 15 for the current wage limit for Social Security wages.
There's no wage base limit for Medicare tax. All covered wages are subject to Medicare tax.
Make this 4.5% and stop having insurance companies. It will be a net gain when i dont pay insurance premiums and my employer doesnt either. My company is probably payint 12k a year for my health insurance premiums, im paying 6k. Thats 18k. I dont make 200k a year but I would need to in order for the breakeven point where my private insurance healthcare premiums out of pocket would be the same as the increase in taxes Id pay. My employer would be coming out ahead up until they paid me 400k. Not to mention i could have limited to no out of pocket expenses. Id still be way ahead, and even if I wasnt I would be all for this because if I lost my job I wouldnt be fucked with COBRA or no insurance. Btw the public exchanges are terrible. You get horrible rates as an individual from insurance companies. This all should be handled under one bloc to reduce cost.
If you wanted to naively Medicare-ize your healthcare, it would look something more like this as far as I can tell (I mean naively as in a simple model with basic assumptions that isn't complicated, not in a pejorative way):
Right now a 1.5%/1.5% tax is part of how ~60 million people are covered. To scale to the US population would be more like 5xing.
So you're looking at paying 7.5% of your income in taxes, and your employer paying 7.5% which is going to stifle wages in its own ways. Depending on how you join Medicare, you can owe premiums of ~$2-6k a year. And you have potentially thousands out of pocket still.
But you know what? Only about 35% of Medicare is funded by the direct Medicare payroll taxes. It's not enough. 45% is from other (=federal income) taxes to cover the rest. And that's from a budget that's been run at a deficit for decades. So it's not really paid for, it's debt. And I'll simplify again just for our naive model - instead of 45% to 35% we'll just say we need an even 100% more money. We need double the money from the payroll tax alone. That means the equivalent of an additional 7.5%/7.5% means to come from somewhere.
Oh look, your income tax just went up also, then. The total taxes on your side alone just jumped from 1.5% to 15%. Not 4.5% if you actually want this to add up. Plus a couple thousand equivalent of premiums, and then out of pocket if you actually use the healthcare for certain things. But you're not saddled with private premiums.
Oh and this lets you see a nurse practitioner in 6 months if you're available in the morning because afternoon is booked.
Now this makes some assumptions, but so does yours, so if we really want to look at this fairly someone please explain where I've overstepped. Because to me the main oversimplification is that old people are more expensive than healthy young people; however, in a couple places I was generous to that, like only costing an additional 35% instead of the 45%. But also, old people die, whereas young people will be young people and then be old people and THEN die, so they have a longer period of expense. I haven't done a deep dive on this. Or you could just tax the rich instead, right. But my guess is it doesn't look that attractive now? I don't know if you'd dump this option or just be indifferent to it. But this looks like "Medicare for All" to me.
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On November 09 2024 05:31 Velr wrote:
I'm actually still personally wrestling with the fact that a person like Donald Trump got voted in. With a majority of the vote, no electoral college bullshit.... Over half of the voting population of the US thinks a convicted felon, rapist, conman, reality tv-star.... .... that can't string 5 sentences together is the figurehead (again).
I mean... There is plenty of bullshit going around in tiny switzerland but this?... How do you cope? I couldn't....
I am in Argentina these months, and Milei is like a sliiightly smarter Trump on steroids. I would say for most people, it’s just a bit depressing to have a batman villain as president, but what really matters is that a huge portion of the population have slipped into abject poverty in months. And that, you feel everywhere.
Not to say it doesn’t matter to have a complete clown as a figurehead, but it’s really policies that people feel and suffer from.
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Norway28592 Posts
On November 09 2024 05:26 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 05:02 Liquid`Drone wrote:Universal or public health care isn't a panacea for all health problems or obesity, obviously. It's not like the US is the only country in the world with the problem that people are overweight, and frankly, there are probably other explanations outside the health care system - specifically - that cause the difference in degree. Cities being designed for driving instead of walking seems like a pretty big one: They found that adults who live in walkable neighborhoods were 1.5 times more likely to engage in adequate levels of physical activity, and 0.76 times less likely to have obesity, compared to adults living in neighborhoods with low walkability.The other major one is food. Looking solely at caloric intake, the US is #2 on the list for 2018, food energy intake per capita by country, and couple that with the sedentiary lifestyle, and yea, no shocker. The difference - as alluded to by several other posters - is that a country which pays for the health care of its inhabitants - where health care thus is an expenditure, and not a source of profit - is greatly incentivized to try to make some efforts towards preventing health issues rather than treating them, as that is a much less costly way of doing it. Meanwhile a profit-driven system will have actors involved who benefit from the population being unhealthy. Now, I'll be honest and say that I don't have intricate data on this, and the following is more of a 'it is my impression that' - coupled with 'I'm too lazy to really study it in depth at the moment but damn this is kinda interesting to me' - but it is my impression that the big american health care companies will in at least some instances have shareholders/parent companies (I don't even know the terminology of this stuff tbh) who are also involved in, for example, the beverage industry, who have lobbied against, for example, sugar taxes. Kinda like how the opioid epidemic has been driven by profit-based health care benefiting from people being addicted to opiates, a profit-based health care system has perverse incentives to have an unhealthy population, and without being all conspiratorial, lobbyism in the US seems like a pretty tangled somewhat clandestine web of different actors who don't always have the best interests of the public in mind. So it's complicated, and it's not that 'public health care' by itself solves everything - but a profit-based system does, kinda by default, offer some perverse incentives compared to one run by the government. And while the competition inherent to capitalism can sometimes produce great results (hey, I'll admit that even as a self-described socialist), the combination of a) profit-driven b) impossible to opt out of and c) naturally monopolistic (in many cases your option of hospitals to go for treatment is 1) tends to create situations where capitalism at the very least requires some pretty strict regulation. Whereas if health care is government funded, the approach to health care will logically drive itself more towards a holistic solution of all sorts of prevention-based incentives or disincentives because these are less costly than treating health care problems is - for example through adding sin taxes, or building bike lanes and publicly available exercising options, or mandating/incentivizing work places to offer some exercise options during working hours. I'm not convinced that is true. Even in the US the state pays a large share of healthcare costs. Since employers pay a share of the insurance premium they have an incentive to lower healthcare costs as well.
I mean, for all things political, we're usually talking degrees, not whether something exists or not. I'm not saying there's no government incentive to lower health care costs in the US - but I am saying that there are actors with political influence who don't want to lower health care costs in the US. Directly countering the first sentence of the post I am now writing, to my knowledge, those actors actually don't exist in Norway. (Or traditionally didn't. We've actually had a huge growth in private health care as of late, and it is worrying me in many ways, and pleasing me in none.)
Anyway, observing the american health care debate, it seems to be centered around single payer vs private insurance based, while in Norway, I've seen many discussions steming from a 'how to best structure society so that people need less treatment'-perspective. At least until private companies started draining the public sector for doctors, weakening our publicly ran health care.
And well TO BE FAIR, there's also been some issues with massive incompetence in the implementation of a new computer system in my region of Norway, where (government hired and employed) leader figures ended up spending a few hundred million $ on implementing a useless system which has, most likely, caused people to die, and which has also contributed to people moving from the public to the private sector because then at least they wouldn't have to deal with that system. I'm actually guessing this specific type of problem would be less likely to happen in a profit-driven hospital. Doesn't move the needle for what system I overall prefer, though.
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On November 09 2024 05:00 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2024 04:15 ChristianS wrote:On November 09 2024 03:18 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 09 2024 03:03 ChristianS wrote:On November 09 2024 02:30 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 09 2024 01:51 ChristianS wrote:On November 09 2024 01:18 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 09 2024 00:11 ChristianS wrote:On November 08 2024 10:17 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 08 2024 10:11 ChristianS wrote:
[quote]
If the question is “what would the circumstances be under which I would take up arms against my government?” I hope you’ll appreciate that I don’t take the question lightly and don’t necessarily have a comprehensive answer for you right this moment, but I’m certainly pondering what exactly the answer might be. I’m not sure if that’s the question you’re asking, though. "Take up arms" is a bit dramatic, I'm at "what would the circumstances be under which I would join a revolutionary socialist organization" (or "I would read like 50% of a book by a socialist", edit: or just "I would stop voting for Democrats") and have been for YEARS waiting on you guys to have an answer to where you draw the line if not genocide for just that much. I’m imagining various scenarios about Trump carrying out some or all of the atrocities he promised to commit, and your question is “how bad would that have to get for you to agree never to vote for Democrats again?” Do you get how it doesn’t seem like a responsive question? If I promised that right this moment, it wouldn’t change the path a bit because I’m just one CA voter, and if voters en masse made the same promise, surely it would just embolden Republicans to commit atrocities without fear of electoral consequence. The obvious conclusion is that no amount of promising not to vote for Democrats is capable of stopping Republicans from committing atrocities, no? You had to skip "what would the circumstances be under which I would join a revolutionary socialist organization" to get to the edit about voting. You should have started there. But the “how bad would that have to get for you to agree never to vote for Democrats again?” besides being a bit of a transmutation, is a decades old question that precedes us. You speak to the timeliness as if I haven't been putting that question in one form or another to you and libs/Dems here for years without you all ever having anything resembling an answer. Most people just lob childish insults, or talk about any inane/bad faith thing (even on reasonable topics) they can with the oBlade types because as we know, they can't help themselves. You and the person you tried to elect President had the chance to discuss ending the enslavement of your fellow Californians and neither of you mentioned it 1 time afaict. I don't think people appreciate how fucked up that is on so many levels. I don't mean that as a personal indictment of you (I absofuckinglutely do of Harris), but of such deep systemic problems that it probably barely crossed your radar. It'd be bad enough if it was passing despite Harris NEVER mentioning how she was voting on ending the enslavement of her fellow Californians (let alone pushing for it), but it is failing. That makes it so much more unforgivably bad. + Show Spoiler +Maybe it would be helpful to pivot a bit to a related subject: a word socialists often like to use is “revisionism.” As I understand it, it dates back to a late 19th century German socialist named Eduard Bernstein, and the concept is “we don’t need a revolution, we’ll just form political parties, win votes, and enact legislation to bring about socialism.” Socialists don’t exactly use the term as a compliment; indeed, it’s the punchline to the joke about socialists that Drone posted a while back: + Show Spoiler [Drone’s joke] +There's also this joke, which comes in various ways - just copy pasting the first one I found: Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "The proletariat love you. Do you believe in the proletariat?"
He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a communist or a socialist?" He said, "A communist." I said, "Me, too! Marxist-Leninist or anarchist?" He said, "Marxist-Leninist." I said, "Me, too! What kind of thought?" He said, "Trotskyist." I said, "Me, too! Intersectional Trotskyist or Classical Trotskyist?" He said, "Intersectional Trotskyist." I said, "Me, too! Socialist Action (United States), Socialist Alternative (United States), or Socialist Equality Party (United States)?"
He said, "Socialist Action (United States)." I said, "Me, too! Socialist Resurgence splinter group, or Socialist Action mainline?" He said, "Socialist Resurgence splinter group." I said, "Me, too!"
"Socialist Resurgence committee of 2019, or Socialist Resurgence committee of 2021?" He said, "Socialist Resurgence committee of 2021." I said, "Die, bourgeois revisionist!" And I pushed him over. Lenin spends no small amount of time in What is to be Done tearing into Bernstein and Revisionism, and yet for all his sarcasm and scorn, I have trouble enumerating what exactly would be his explanation of why socialism cannot be enacted by electoral campaigns in a liberal democracy. He’s not a vanguardist, he doesn’t think the proles are too dumb to get it and you need a small cadre of radicals to stage a coup and give them their dictatorship against their will. So if you’re going to have to convince the masses of your program, why would it be an unacceptable route to elect representatives who pass bills and amendments? To be clear, I’m not asking this because I think the conclusion is wrong. Now especially, but even after 2020 I didn’t have a ton of faith in our democratic process as an effective engine for change or political decision-making. Kwark et al. are going on about how dumb it is that voters would blame Biden for inflation and such when it’s trivial to analyze why inflation happened and whether Biden did a good job combating it; but the fact remains, voters overwhelmingly make decisions on the basis of those kinds of factors. Where can you go with that besides questioning the premise of government based on elections decided by this electorate? If a fairly simple analysis like “why does inflation happen?” is way beyond what we can expect of the average voter, I certainly don’t think you can expect a majority of them to undergo the kind of revolutionary socialist self-education you’re begging everyone in the thread to find time for. But… then what? Are we back to vanguardism? Lenin eventually got somewhere with this stuff, but I’m not particularly thrilled to follow the path of early 20th century Russia (neither how they got to revolution, nor where they when after it). I want to keep this manageable so the rest can wait. Let's take back a step and focus on "what would the circumstances be under which I would join a revolutionary socialist organization". I obviously favor Revolutionary Socialism (as developed primarily by Black radicals mostly after WWII) but how about just a socialist org? We could include DSA which still does plenty of voting for Democrats? I get people are busy, but "democracy" in any meaningful sense of the word isn't just voting every couple years based on a party you have no influence on. + Show Spoiler +I mean, I guess the generic answer is “people (including myself) will sign onto a political project if they think it seeks better outcomes than the alternatives and has a reasonable chance of achieving them.” When exactly to focus on ideology (“seeks better outcomes”) and when to focus on efficacy (“has a reasonable chance of achieving them”) is a constant dilemma with no simple solution, and different posters might place their objections to socialist organizations on one or the other (or both), but I’m guessing for most folks around here, they think revolutionary socialists have almost no chance of ever taking power in America (extremely low on the efficacy measure), and if they did, they worry all the quoting Lenin and Stalin and Mao is an indication they would institute some kind of authoritarian regime (presumably low on the ideology measure as well).
But that’s me guessing at what everybody else thinks. For myself I guess I do figure the socialists tend to have somewhat idealistic/naive conceptions about affecting political change (i.e. potentially low on efficacy) but all the hard-nosed cynical Democratic political operatives seem pretty fucking incompetent, too. Feels like nobody knows anything about how to make things happen, and the actual outcomes are decided mostly by chance or circumstance. This is what Democrats robbing their supporters of the actual history of change does smh. Most of what we take for granted today (weekends, overtime, not being locked inside burning buildings, etc) that was achieved (mostly in the first half of the 20th century and before) was won by socialist guided organized labor engaging in organized mass civil disobedience. Democrats are functionally the people that shepherded people away from the functioning socialist approach to change and toward the lib/Dem one you recognize is shit now. On ideology I just don’t feel like I understand what socialists want enough to even say anything conclusively about it. + Show Spoiler +Certainly the realities of Soviet or Maoist rule seem pretty grim, maybe less so than the monarchist or colonialist regimes they were meant to replace but not obviously superior to liberal democracies, either. But also those were/are pretty much entirely undemocratic regimes, and socialist revolutionaries in the US always seem to think their system will be democratic. Which leads me to the question you decided to put off until later: how exactly are you supposed to get widespread support for a program that requires so much challenging self-education, and if you could, why would you need to overthrow liberal democratic governments just to establish a new system that’s apparently still democratic? Like, why are we even still talking about my vote? + Show Spoiler +I didn’t vote for Biden in the primary and it made no difference. I did vote for Kamala in the general and it made no difference. I’m well aware my vote is insignificant, I mostly only bothered to fill the thing out for some of the propositions that apparently are also gonna fail (fucking hell, this state). You and I seem to be in agreement that meaningful change is only gonna come from non-ballot-related activities, so why do we keep talking about whether I bubble in that first question or not? Why do you even care? Same reason as Kwark and the rest of the Harris/Democrat supporters: On November 08 2024 22:53 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 08 2024 15:37 KwarK wrote:On November 08 2024 15:31 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 08 2024 14:04 KwarK wrote:On November 08 2024 13:04 Salazarz wrote:
[quote]
Arresting a guy for leading a coup is not fascism, it's just following the laws. Plenty of randos in the crowd that stormed the capitol got criminal charges.
The way I see it, there's a huge disconnect in messaging and actions of the Dems. Either Trump is all the things they say he is, and then them not dealing with him is a massive failure to uphold the law and security of the country; or he is not, in fact, all the things they say he is and they're just trying to push people into voting for them because 'big bad orange will get ya' otherwise. It's the first. They trusted in institutions that couldn't be relied upon. Sooo the same thing they are doing by handing Trump/Project 2025 control of the most lethal military in the world? That' should work out well /s We can ignore all the warnings people got that this would happen, and just go with "fool me once, shame on you, fool me 542 times..." Also, to be fair, the institution of the Supreme Court did give Democrats the power to hold him accountable. Unfortunately, Democrats are even less reliable than Trump's Supreme Court. Dunno why you keep holding this stuff against me as if I'm running the Democrats. ...supporting them. They ostensibly derive their power from you and voters like you. From a liberal democratic pov, you and people like you need to extract better than that from them. Alternatively, you and voters like yourself need to extract them and replace them with people that will do better than make the same mistake for the 543rd time of trusting institutions and norms to control Trump/Project 2025's openly fascist ambitions. I'd prefer you and voters like yourself just join revolutionary socialist orgs and go from there, but if you all insist on keeping your lib-Dem politics, the WORLD needs you to demand better from your leaders RIGHT NOW, EN MASSE, in every venue possible. Which ties into the issue with you and other libs/Dems not having a line for when you'd have to stop supporting Democrats since clearly even genocide doesn't cross it. On November 08 2024 10:02 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 08 2024 08:52 KwarK wrote:On November 08 2024 06:45 GreenHorizons wrote:On November 08 2024 05:33 WombaT wrote:
If the Democrats framed Trump as a shitbag who’d shortly fuck off, let’s figure out some messaging to counter him, that’s one thing. Kinda my position
But they want to simultaneously frame him as a Fascist threat to democracy, while also doing nothing to block his ascent to power What is terrifying to me is that libs/Dems are just going to retcon the "Trump is a fascist that will destroy democracy" thing, as we see happening now. Then insist no matter how authoritarian Trump gets, that he's not actually a fascist dictator, because then electoralism wouldn't be worth shit and they are lesser evil absolutists. They'll be the one's explaining " actually this bipartisan mass deportation bill is a win because we got some more weapons for Israel and Ukraine!" Then " Oh, turns out there's no where that will take the ~10,000,000+ people we Democrats and Republicans rounded up, guess we'll have to make these camps a bit more permanent" Then " Oh you know who could do the work? These people illegals we rounded up! It's okay if they don't want to, we can legally force them" and so on....That's just one of the lib/Dem to fascism examples but there's more. Before anyone tells me "oh Democrats wouldn't let Trump enslave undocumented immigrants, put them in work camps, and violently punish those that refuse". Genocidal Democrats are already building the cop cities across the country that could fill/staff the prison camps while actively voting against ending slavery in California in 2024 (Harris NEVER mentioning this being on her ballot is actually unbelievable to me). FOH. This is all happening right in front of our faces and libs/Dems are just like "man this hot tub is nice, smells a bit like spices though...". I don't anticipate defending or apologizing for anything Trump does, though it's possible he might be tricked into something good. I'm still pissed at him for shit from 2016. Though one thing I will say for him is that he's never hidden what he is. Even back then he was openly stating that he'll accept the results of the election if he wins and refuse to accept them if he loses. The scorpion never claimed he was anything other than a scorpion. I have more venom and contempt for those who decided that they didn't have enough scorpions in their lives. ... What I'm describing is a bipartisan mass deportation aka ethnic cleansing effort that would be rationalized by you and other lib/Dems, much like you all just did with your/Harris/Biden's support of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. To ChristianS point, when GENOCIDE doesn't pass for "consequences bad enough it’s worth abandoning that first principle (the one about the president being whoever won the election)." it begs the question of what is? So far you guys have given me nothing, so I have to believe Trump and Democrats enslaving 10,000,000 immigrants wouldn't be it either. You voting for someone that couldn't even mention that there was an opportunity to stop enslaving her fellow Californians from her home state when the whole country was looking at her, is emblematic of how problematic that is. + Show Spoiler +Sure, the Democratic Party derives political power and legitimacy from people like me or Kwark or DPB being willing to vote for them. The US government derives power and legitimacy from our labor, tax dollars, etc. If we were to stop being willing to vote for them, they’d pivot to whatever position allowed them to maximize their support from whoever continued to engage with the political system; if we were to stop working or paying taxes the US government would pivot to deriving its power and legitimacy from whoever continued to engage with the economic system.
You’re fundamentally opposed to making moral arguments on a “compared to the alternative” basis, but personally I’m going to be more interested in plans which achieve better outcomes, which requires choosing among available alternatives. Political abstention is one of those available alternatives but I have yet to hear even a theoretical mechanism by which it would achieve better outcomes for anyone. + Show Spoiler + If I didn’t give a shit about achieving better outcomes for people, and just to keep my name or reputation or immortal soul unsullied by association with horrible stuff, I can see how political abstention would help me. But when this stuff has real, enormous consequences for other people’s lives it’s hard for me to feel good about just trying to not get my hands dirty.
But anyway, haven’t we been here before? Haven’t we already done this? I don’t want to talk about trolley problems, particularly at a moment when it’s already clear to both of us that neither of us have any influence over whether the lever gets pulled or not anyway. Like, I agree that Kamala should have voiced support for the amendment, and more generally that CA liberals are responsible for a state that continues to enact regressive and exploitative policies while pretending everything would be progressive and wonderful if national politics went their way. I have no control over that. Supposedly leftists have proposed courses of action outside electoral politics that might ameliorate things, why don’t we talk about those? Doesn’t that sound more productive? + Show Spoiler +"Not voting for Democrats" Isn't political abstention. I know you know that and strawman it that way disingenuously on purpose. You should stop that. Man, “political abstention [from national electoral contests such as the recent presidential election]” is a lot to type! I write my posts on my phone! But yes, I certainly understand that you don’t advocate abstention from all political activity, not even from all electoral politics, and did not mean to imply otherwise. Would “national electoral abstention” be a better shorthand? + Show Spoiler +Or would that still be a strawman since you don’t necessarily advocate abstention from all national electoral contests, just most of them in the current political environment? No, I voted for president days ago. Show nested quote +You should have some control over that. There are people that go to the Democrat meetings and make the policies from the local to the national level (though for Democrats it typically flows the other way nowadays). That could be you just as easily as anyone else (but for the whole Hamster Wheel + Show Spoiler +1. There's a problem
2. Politicians won't fix it
3. Need to replace the politicians with ones that will
4. Can't replace the politicians because of how the system works
5. Need to fix the system
6. Politicians won't fix it (because it benefits them)
7. Repeat ad nauseam. problem of electoralism) Just to be sure I’m understanding you right: you want me to work at becoming one of the movers and shakers setting Democratic Party policies? Work my way up from the inside, ingratiate myself to party leaders, win some influence and use it to change things from the inside? That sounds like the kind of thing you’d dismiss as misguided attempts at reforming the current system + Show Spoiler +, and Lenin would dismiss as Revisionism. Surely you’d say I dedicate my energies to something more revolutionary ? It is imo, but if you're insisting on keeping your lib/Dem politics, that's how you stop yourself from having to vote for people that support slavery and genocide. That is, if not supporting slavery and genocide is something that is important to you. I presume it is, but you're slowly working on convincing me otherwise. Show nested quote +As to talking about "proposed courses of action outside electoral politics that might ameliorate things" being more productive, it is with socialists. It Is with (edit:most some)reasonable social democrats. Not so much with libs/Dems that are primarily just looking to shit on them in order to rationalize their continued support of genocide and the rest. So you’re trying to convince everybody to be socialists, but you don’t want to talk about all the good stuff socialists can do except with other socialists? No, I said it can be done with some social democrats too. It's about how one comes to the conversation and Freire talks about this. Show nested quote ++ Show Spoiler +Maybe part of the problem here is that the only correct answer to “how should I engage with national politics?” is “Don’t!” but this is fundamentally a thread about US national politics. You’re apparently doing a lot of good engagement with local organizations on local problems, but you don’t want to talk about it here because it’s local stuff nobody in the thread has reason to know or care about. Meanwhile what you actually think the rest of us should do is similarly engage with local organizations on local problems, but you can’t tell us how to do that because you’re not from the same place we’re from. I’m not sure what the answer to that problem is, though; I can think about how to have solidarity with my coworkers but it’s not especially useful to discuss in the thread. That's why I've been telling you to join a socialist org (could even be DSA, very easy to find/join) for years. They are doing local things, with local orgs in your area, tackling local problems. That's how you do it, and I've been telling you specifically (along with everyone else) that for years. The reasonable conclusion for me to draw is that it's one of those “Don't tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value.” type things where you can say opposing genocide/slavery matters to you, but your "budget" (be it time, money, effort, voting, etc) is telling me otherwise.
Sure, I’m like anybody else, I work a job and try to take care of myself and my friends and family, and generally be kind to the people around me. If I find any time around the edges to go to a bar with coworkers or play a video game for an hour I count myself fortunate. I like the idea of making more substantial commitments to bigger projects out of a sense of civic responsibility but most of the time (especially in the last year) it feels like I’m barely keeping my head above water.
Yes, I generally prioritize that stuff above studying socialist theory or attending city counsel meetings or getting involved with my local DSA. I’m pretty sure that’s normal though. It always feels like you’re threatening to proclaim me selfish and complicit in all the atrocities of the modern world but you’re holding back on actually doing it because you’re hoping I’ll be motivated to scramble and show you you’re wrong. But for me it does the same thing berating myself does – destroy my motivation level and make it even harder to get through the day taking care of myself, let alone find something extra for helping others.
Maybe talking specifics about how joining orgs and volunteering time and energy and money has helped your community (even though I’m not one of the socialists or social democrats you’ve deemed worthy of those conversations) would be more motivating to me? But don’t stress too much about motivating me one way or another, just proclaim my soul lost and move on to someone else you think is still savable if you want to.
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Fundamentally we have a cost problem. We can sort out funding multiple ways, fair, but i think we all agree the cost is too high? What can you do to lower the cost? I would recommend negotiating as a block. You want access to the US market for healthcare, drugs, etc? These are the rates we will pay you. You will still make tons of money but the bullshit needs to stop.
The way you do that is have a single payer system. If you truly hate that you need to implement price controls some other way. I was totally onboard with the policy proposal where all the medical rates needed to be public. Thats great. Not sure what happened to it but we need to make it happen again.
Btw the argument about taking 6 months to see a nurse practictioner is BS to me. We have long wait times already, it can be months to see a specialist even with private insurance. If the only reason wait times are low is because we are excluding people who cannot afford to get medical care that is beyond immoral. If you think its because the govt is slow, fix it! Train more people, provide incentives for speed. I dont know.
We need to fix problems, not just throw our hands up.
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Inefficiencies aside, I think it's overly simplified and incorrect to imply lower tax on same wage in anyway implies a better standard of life overall. If you think on a macro level, it's the opposite, with all things being the same.
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