Last week, the Trump Administration announced an incredible 1.5 trillion dollars in aid for billionaires and large transnational corporations. In the interim, he instructed his republican legislators to shoot down Tulsi Gabbard’s emergency legislation which would have given every American adult a paltry (but essential) 1000.00 per month in aid.
There is no one that Donald Trump has more hatred and contempt for than the working families who were responsible for his rise to power.
Trump’s billionaire associates, in the mean time, have told Americans that they are on their own financially.
For many years, men like me (and Derek) have been cursed by the typical manosphere losers as communists, because we spoke the truth about our backgrounds in our own respective subcultures. I won’t pretend to know how the anabaptists typically weather such downturns. Among Mormons, we have the bishop’s storehouse, emergency welfare, small collective farms, and we are armed and organized to defend all this. Even as a godless atheist, my ethnic background entitles me to survive a catastrophe. I have only to ask for help, and it’ll be given.
On a related note, I grew up in a capitalist state (known as British Columbia) where we collectivized our insurance schema and legislated universal coverage. Our proximity to the United States meant we could afford to do this easily, because our confederation had a zero defense budget. You Americanos have slaved away your whole lives to give me medical care, while your leaders deny it to you. Thanks, yanks!
I still have health care through the MSP, and if I got sick, I could drive a few hours and be treated at no extra cost to myself.
So, now that the same working-class Americans have been abandoned by their government, and are facing eviction and bankruptcy, who is stepping in to help? It’s not my people, thanks to human garbage like Mitt Romney and Harry Reid. They hung you out to dry. It’s not Derek’s people, either.
Those who are stepping up to help Americans are the Chinese Communist Party and loyal Chinese citizens.
This is the man who is actually trying to “Make America Great Again” :
The same politicians, businessmen and media shitbags who constantly encourage Americans to see these people as our enemies, have hung you out to dry. Jeff Bezos, for example, is now “vacationing” on the South Island of New Zealand, while you struggle to make ends meet. Make sure you continue to buy needless trinkets from amazon dot com.
Take some time to tweet thanks to the only people who care about your plight.
On the upside, the pandemic means that the usual distractions have been cancelled.
This is something of a blessing, because the typical American morons will now have the time to reflect on their priorities, and many of them will likely come to a healthier understanding of their place in the world.
I’m gonna make no friends saying this ..
1) Get a better job .. and .. stop doing business with these companies.
Also .. (re: not making friends) ..
2) ALL of us are expendable .. every.single.one.of.us.
There is a meme running around on Facebook among our family/friends about how somebody should tell the Amish what is going. Sure, it’s a joke about their lack of technology, but the underlying implication is that they won’t notice.
Dear Honeycomb:
This isn’t about being friends, really. It’s about having good ethics and social priorities.
Some men have limited options due to lack of education, criminal convictions, etc. These men are forced to work for Kroger, McDonald’s, and Target.
Should their work go unrewarded? Should their children face homelessness at a time like this? Serious question.
It’s very strange to hear Christians say such things. Those men are children of the Creator, are they not?
The reality is that these men who work at Wendy’s and Subway would be able to thrive in our wealthy society if they were treated fairly. Capital has enabled parasites like Jeff Bezos to siphon off much of the wealth they earn, and has left them with a starvation wage. This simply isn’t just. Donald Trump swore that if these same men voted for him, that he would be their greatest champion. So much for that.
It seems to me Boxer that every UTOPIA (fair) world is a failure.
And for good reason. There should be imcentives ina good society to not be a criminal or other.
You can’t have freedom and a fair society. You will have outlaws. And you will have those that they take advantage of.
The Bible is very clear .. THE POOR WILL ALWAYS BE WITH US .. always. No matter what we do ..
Use tour FREEDOM wisely .. and maintain the liberty to spend your time and money as would bennie-fit society.
In closing .. MEN are equal at one time in life. Well .. twice.
Consider this comment from two days ago…
…along with this comment:
China cares even less about us than American politicians, businessmen, and media who have “hung you out to dry.” China, like the aforementioned Americans, are pro-censorship and worse. Much worse. Find me a single significantly sized government that has ever not hung its population out to dry, be it communist, capitalist, democratic, socialist, monarchist, etc. Small religious/ethnic communities and certain small governments* can be effective, but these don’t usually scale. At best, you’ve made the argument that all governments are bad, not that there is an alternative. There is one solution that has worked throughout history which you, ironically, demonstrated in your examples: ethnocentrism.
* or larger governments of populations with exceptionally high IQ.
The data does not agree with this assessment. Please read this health care primer. The data tells us that medical care has very high elasticity. Health care spending increases with wealth and is largely unaffected by prices. Americans have more per capita health care than most of the rest of the world and the data backs this up.
Yes. This has been my take as well (in meatspace).
This is an analytically ambiguous statement. Does “more per capita health care” mean that the average worker at Target can afford to see a physician? It does not. Does it mean that the average worker at McDonalds has health coverage by default? No, it doesn’t mean that either.
Thirty million Americans don’t have any insurance, and are subject to crippling bills the moment they need medical care.
https://www.kff.org/uninsured/issue-brief/key-facts-about-the-uninsured-population/
About 35% of Americans don’t have a doctor, at all.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-pcp-trends/declining-numbers-of-americans-have-a-primary-care-provider-idUSKBN1YK1Z4
The U.S. has a far worse health care system than many third-world shitholes (Cuba, Chile) and has undoubtedly the most inefficient and ridiculous system for distributing services of any society, ever.
It is not ambiguous if you read the article I linked. If you did so, you would know that health care scales non-linearly with income. The poor receive less income, so they have (much) less health care. The rich have more income, so they have (much) more health care. This is true worldwide and it has been true for half a century. At best your anecdotal citations distort this reality and at best they support it.
The U.S. is not a health care outlier. This is a persistent and popular view, but it is a myth. If you predicted 30 years ago that the rest of the world would follow the trend line established by the U.S. based on increasing income and increasing health care consumption, you would have correctly predicted current consumption. No other health care models.notably including pricing models.have done so. These trends are independent of the system of government, except to the extent that government systems affect real income.
Even if 30,000,000 Americans don’t have health insurance, 35% of Americans don’t have a doctor, and U.S. health care is poor and unfair, it doesn’t change these facts. The bottom line is that if you want the poor to have more health care, they require greater sustainable income. That’s it. All other solutions have not worked and will not work.
As an aside, the data also suggests that the highest consumers of health care have reached the point of diminishing returns. In other words, they will spend more money on health care as their incomes increase, but it won’t actually meaningfully improve their health.
Derek:
Thanks for posting the link. You seem to expect me to have read it within an hour, despite its length (comparable to The Great Gatsby) and density (approaching Being and Event). I did skim it. If anything, my first impressions are that it backs my efficiency argument up, rather than refuting it.
This sort of thing (refusing to read my short, easily understandable and perfectly traceable links) suggests that any further conversation won’t be fruitful. We’ll just have to agree to disagree.
Boxer
No, I expected you to not debate me on something you did not read. I made specific points and you threw some links at me as if they had some relevance (they do not). That was lazy. If you don’t have the time to deal with a refutation of your claim, that’s fine. Your time is your own and you are under no obligation to spend it on anything that I throw out there. But don’t insult both of our intelligence by making a poor argument in response.
Perhaps it would be fruitful if I refuted the relevance of your links, rather than outright dismissing them. If you don’t wish to respond, fine, but at least your readers can see why your links are irrelevant and misleading.
As an anecdotal argument, the number of Americans without insurance fails to even approach my argument or defend yours. Nobody denies that a small percentage of people have huge bills for medical care. Statistical outliers don’t impact the central claim that health care has high income elasticity.
The laws of supply and demand are basic economics. Somebody has to pay for it. Insurance does not magically change this. If you eliminate those huge bills that a small number of have to shoulder, someone else is going to suffer for it. Historically, the UK was among the best at rationing health care in order to solve this problem, but this just replaced one problem with another (worse) problem. The UK has since reduced rationing and reverted to the mean. Ironically, it now behaves more like historical America.
In America, immigration has been relatively easy and immigrants receive health care. Meanwhile, Canada pays for its health care by heavily regulating immigration and increasing per capita health care spending through high taxes. If the US has a worse system, it is because it is more generous (i.e. less evil) than Canada. Canadians visit American specialists and Americans do not go to Cuba or Chile for treatment.
This is also a misleading anecdote. I don’t have a doctor, I just visit an urgent care or clinic when I need medical care. It is cheaper, easier, faster, and more effective. What few times I go to a doctor’s office, I end up seeing a CRNP. I can’t remember the last time I have seen “my” doctor. Maybe a decade?
Since the ACA passed, my health insurance has gone up by 2x to 3x without any gain in access to health services. My co-pays are also substantially higher. The law, passed by Obama and the Democrats, is by far the primary driver of my health costs. I now pay 5 figures per year for health insurance plus whatever the services my family consumes cost.
Health care spending is highly elastic. This means that my hugely increased payments are not changing the per capita health care spending. Indeed, since the ACA, my money is now going towards paying for other people to receive health services. Contrary to your portrayal, America very much has a generous socialized system of health insurance. This is, perhaps, why you claim this:
Let’s say that this claim is true, for sake of argument. My argument shows that income almost completely predicts health care spending and not pricing. America has high per capita spending and this spending is not driven by higher medical costs. Thus, if we gave 100% of Americans health insurance and 100% of Americans had doctors without also increasing long-term income proportionally, this would necessarily cause the health care system to decline further. Indeed, the logical solution to a worse health care system would be to reduce the number of people benefiting from it. If you wanted to improve the health care system in the US, you would not be able to do so by universal health care, price controls, rationing, or changes in personal income.
This is your fault, you know. Long ago you demanded that I make better arguments and give better citations. That has been my goal for some time now.
The Random Critical Analysis blog also has an excellent post here (it is even longer) that directly pertains to your “U.S. has a far worse health care system” claim. Here is a notable quote…
…and another…
I was on ObamaCare for two years. My deductable was more than the disaster insurance I had for emergencies that the Democrats said was “no good”
So I followed the law “you must get insurance” and i could not find one doctor that was taking new patients under the new guidelines. So i was basically paying a lot more for the same insurance i had that i was paying less for to just use for emergency room visits. But Obama cared so much. The law says you must have insurance….these 30 million Americans obviously have not got the message.
Anyway. Cant stand Trump. Voted Libertraian. He also made a 5 billion arms deal with a country who is not and has not EVER been our friend. Saudi Arabia.
But boy he’s a real Alpha and is standing up for men….and his tweets are funny……if that is “leadership” and what men deem as that……proves to me most “real men” are just talk like he is.
The USA has paid a huge price in policing the world so other countries COULD have “socialized” medicine.
Your hero Trump also supports abortion. Supports divorce. Voted for and endorsed Bill Clinton in 92 and 96….but he’s the “greatest President ever” bc he appointed a supreme court justice that was a dumb jock and a “guys guy”
Big whoop
Dear Jason:
This whole conversation must be hilarious from your perspective: Two PhDz and a commercial airline pilot bicker about possible solutions to the poor problem, while a dude who actually did something about the poors (working in the streets for years with the salvation army) laughs at their pretentious nonsense.
Anyway, please see inside text…
Obama’s best efforts were scuttled by the machinations of a bunch of special interests, and their tools included the Mormons Mitt Romney (CONservative R) and Harry Reid (shitLIBERAL D) who conspired to let billionaire insurance execs ride the coattails of working people. We should never forget their treachery.
Right. Remember when he was running? He was big on promising no more wars, was he not? All those promises went immediately down the toilet once he was elected.
That’s exactly right. No country has benefitted more than Canada. Also, all those safety-nets that still exist in Europe were designed and funded by a guy named Marshall, with the help of economists and political philosophers at Harvard University, right after WWII. American workers have busted their asses for decades to improve the lives of other people. Now it’s their turn to get a little social welfare, the big shots say “no”.
No American politician at the national level, of ANY professed ideology, gives a desiccated shit about the American citizenry. On the rare occasions when they do anything even remotely beneficial to said proletariat, it’s purely coincidental; their interests having just happened to overlap with those of the commoners in one particular, narrow set of circumstances by which said commoners are blessed with certain spillover benefits of the elite’s self-centered choices. This has been so obviously the case for so long that I simply cannot any longer muster sympathy for anyone who is surprised or angered by a politician’s duplicity. It’s like being shocked at having your hand bitten after you pet a dog that you already know is of a temperament to go from friendly to attack mode on a whim.
I won’t join in on the arguments over the relative merits of Capitalism or Socialism. Suffice it to say that in this flawed world controlled by flawed people there will always be the struggle between the haves and have-nots, with neither side being inherently good or evil, and outcomes not always (indeed, rarely ever) being fair and equitable to both sides. No politician of any ideology, feigned or genuine, will ever make that go away.
The Sport of Speculation . The Chicago Economist
https://www.thechicagoeconomist.com/episodes/the-sport-of-speculation
It seems that WE THE PEOPLE have outlived our grand experiment.
Bloated Government doesn’t work. The CDC was busy fighting sjw issues and virtue signalling when its primary task was left to die on the vine. By design.
It’s not the only department of the government infected with the die-seezes.
The swamp won.
It has the media and its dependents scared to death about a nothing case of the flu.
As all governments do .. they create the problem and then articulate why they are the only ones that can fix it. You just have to give more of your freedoms and liberty away in exchange.
And the while .. the government doesn’t do its one job and flaunts it. THE ILLEGAL INVASION FORCE that happens daily is marginalized. The rule of law .. again .. marginalized. We could cite example after example. Let’s move on.
What will it do .. nothing. The swamp won. And they will come and pick us off one by one .. on-line and in-person.
They won.
We could have insured all the under and non-insured before Obummer care. For 10x’s less. But, where’s the fun in that. No more un-insured. Who could campaign on that solved issue? /S They got exactly what they wanted .. another major piece of the GDP apple and more control in your life.
The swamp won.
So .. we have zero states rights. We have been reduced to the rights that government decides we should have and when we should have them. They operate without fear.
What you should fear is a government that can give anything you want .. can also take anything it wants.
This exercise proves they won .. they have everyone on lock-down about something less (or equally) deadly than (as) the flu.
THEY WON.
My recommendation is to make piece with it .. and control what you can control. You’ll never have a say in your elected officials. If you did they wouldn’t let you vote.
Plus they are breeding you out of your own country .. and more than half of the country thinks its a great for the country.
They won!
getting paid for being sick. I want in on this racket.
Shout out to Mr. Jack Ma,
you re-selling these items here bud?
https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2020/02/canada-supports-chinas-ongoing-response-to-novel-coronavirus-outbreak.html
While we are now just days away from running out of these necessities.
Well I guess not bad for a drama teacher!
LOL! 80% of Wuhan virus test kits shipped from China to Czech Republic failed!
Yup, real heroes of the masses.
https://www.irozhlas.cz/zpravy-domov/ostrava-rychlotesty-koronavirus_2003231414_sot
Sorry Brother your commie friends suck
Bloated Government doesn.t work. The CDC was busy fighting sjw issues and virtue signalling when its primary task was left to die on the vine.
Funny thing is; I am likely about to loose my job, at least for a while, but the (CDC)Center for Disease Control folks are probably going to be hiring even more people after their colossal failure to serve any purpose. SMH
Hey Boxer, just wanted to let you know that Kylie Kirkpatrick, who I mentioned earlier, got hauled away last weekend on 8 felony fraud counts, see Turtle Boys site for the details and her mugshot, A face which sank a hundred ships. ..
Lol….but isnt Trump great? He writes funny tweets. He’s a real alpha! He supports the average guy! He has done so much for the USA (debt still going up, no cuts, weapon deals with countries who are not our friends). He’s just so funny and he puts Pelosi in line. He’s just the greatest president since Reagan! He’s all for working class people (manufacturing / blue collar jobs still sinking….like they been since 1974). He stands up for men and boys (zero reforms passed…..courts or otherwise). He is a real man and has dine sooooo much to help men ( crickets chirping here).
This is all sarcasm. He’s just as bad as Bush II. At least….and this isnt saying much….
But Obama at least broke out the lube as he bent us over abd shoved a dildo further up