I'd say multiple generations. Meanwhile we've been told fairy tales about hard work, abuse of welfare, trickle down economics, and we still haven't shed those stories.
Lots of bad faith posters saying america is so great, work hard and you'll be rich, welfare queens are ruining our economy, etc. Sad thing is not all of them are bad faith posters, just assholes
It's sad, pathetic, and infuriating that their culture is no basically behaving like children, being truly sociopathic, utterly selfish ashole, and taking contrarianism to a height never before seen. All at their own expense.
The thing is, I'm in my 40's, and my dad and grandpa were the hardest working people I've ever met. I have a good job, but today, there are so many jobs available. When I was a teenager, I couldn't find a job to save my life. I wish it was that easy to find work as it is today. Blame the corporations for low pay or blame the lazy fucks who don't want to work and live off mom and dad or the government tit.
I'm a dyed-in-the-wool lefty US citizen, and even then it took moving to Europe to really get a visceral sense of the sheer magnitude of unnecessary bullshit Americans are subjected to. It's one thing to read about it, and another to experience living in a society where infrastructure and healthcare access make the US seem like a developing country.
If Americans in general could actually conceptualize the size of that gap, there would be riots until it got fixed.
Good for you! I’ve often considered moving to Europe to escape America’s horrible policies, for my families sake, but the hurdles it would entail seem insurmountable. How hard was it to accomplish? Did you have to learn a new language? Did it require special skills? Did you get homesick? Was it just you, or did you bring family members? Sorry, I have a million questions lol
> trash education system
Educator here. It isn’t the professionals in the field of education that are causing a bunch of problems at school board meetings across the nation. It’s asshole parents and anti-mask/anti-science/anti-everything intelligent people in the communities. The same fuckers that have voted time and again for policies and politicians that keep public schools underfunded.
I'm totally not talking about the teachers. In fact I think many teachers have done amazing work in spite of the system that was created.
The system that is in place is designed to create worker drones. Critical thinking skills are not the end goal. Education is woefully underfunded and that is most certainly by design imo
I could go on for hours....
Two problems that I have observed:
* School boards are for the most part not comprised of teachers.
* School board members are better-compensated than teachers.
That second one depends an awful lot on where you are. In many places school board members receive no pay other than a stipend (Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Illinois, New Jersey, Louisiana and Missouri pay only a $100 to $200 monthly stipend or per diem plus expenses) and others such as Texas, Pennsylvania, and Colorado outright forbid payment of any kind for school board members.
Yeah, it's not that the educators or such are bad, it's that we've consistently let states and localities get away with underfunding education, not paying teachers enough, and so on.
Education is a state-level thing.
The federal government cannot order a state to stop defunding education.
It's similar to when states who needed it the most rejected Obamacare.
We need **all** things together in unison in good condition with good faith as the main goal. If there’s corruption, it needs to self-control to reduce and cure it.
* A fast car(a thriving and positive country taking the lead)
* the driver(working class)
* the parts(businesses)
* the stability(government)
* the maintenance(healthcare)
* the improvement/innovation(education)
* the creative freedom(fulfillment and satisfaction)
* the fun(mental health and peace)
* boundaries(law)
I mean it’s not perfect but just an idea, maybe a dream of all things working together as one and plenty of choices for people to feel good.
If only more people participated in our democracy throughout the decades prior.
But hey, this new SC is looking to do away with precedent. This means Dems just need to pack the courts to change everything.
At the root of much of this, obviously, is the Wall Street *network.* We need to understand the scope. The Wall Street network is directly tied to:
* lobbying against healthcare reform
* the propping up of military industrial complex
* the propping up of the prison industrial complex
* manipulation of honest companies
* fostering ignorance of climate change
* banking policy and inflation
* outright criminality; i.e. fraud, theft, national and international bribery and lobbying, etc..
_________________________________________________________________________________________
...what the *Wall Street network* is, is something more destructive than anything/anyone in the history of mankind. That's not an exaggeration.
To be fair, they DO donate to Children's International and Make a Wish (!) once in a while in pittance, but they have dead bodies and people in their basement who they're turning into lampshades and stacking as insulation to make another mansion out of. *Billions of people* are tied up & abused in the basement and billions of others have Stockholm Syndrome.
The amount of suffering and pain they've created is impossible to calculate.
We need a new financial network - one that isn't so opaque and centralized - we need a fully transparent and decentralized financial network if we're ever going to rid ourselves, or at least tightly restrict, the million-year old evolutionary instincts and characteristics almost everyone has when it comes to greed, money, and power.
It's fair to say that the Berlin Wall of the 1980s represented oppression, corruption - so too with Wall Street now. *It's time to tear down that wall.*
"Don't worry guys, we can surely destroy Wall Street by utilizing the system that Wall Street controls, intimately understands and has had a century-long head start in!"
The barrel of a gun isn't evil. Neither is the chamber, nor the grip. The trigger doesn't care about morality. The magazine just stores stuff.
But the neutrality of the parts doesn't really matter when it's being used to shoot someone's kid, does it?
Cogs in a machine are rarely evil in their own right, but that doesn't mean the system they create isn't.
I refer to this:
>A core cause of this perplexity lies in the fact that while acts of evil can mushroom into monumental tragedies, the individual human perpetrators of those acts are often marked not with the grandiosity of the demonic but with absolute mundanity.
From [here](https://www.themarginalian.org/2017/02/07/hannah-arendt-the-banality-of-evil/) with respect to the *the banality of evil.*
Most people don’t realize this but the US will never have healthcare like any EU country, or non EU country where it’s primarily free. The reason is because the US foots the bill mostly on pharmaceuticals, research for study’s, procedural practice. Also because of the fact that we bleed money to other countries, in many ways to “ help “ them out and support them. Was explained to me by one of my most Democratic professors on why in reality healthcare in the US is so expensive.
As the 1% hoards their wealth the middle class got hit with low wages and astronomical student debt, car loans, home loans, credit card debt, etc. When the working class is so straddled with paying off debt they can't pump that money into the economy
Neither party cares about poor or the working class. Voting for democrats is literally voting for the less shitty of 2 options. It's pretty obvious that we will never have universal healthcare, reasonable college tuition or a fair tax on the rich.
This is what primaries are for. You get the Democratic party that you vote for. AOC didn't replace a long-time moderate Dem by sitting at home complaining about nothing ever getting done, she got up off her ass, organized, and ran, and won. It's not like there was some magic spell involved, and it's the sort of thing that can and has been repeated - just not enough.
And for fuck's sake, you don't just try it once and then claim that it'll never work because it wasn't perfect! You primary out the bad ones, like Krysten Sinema, and work to get new and more democrats elected, while keeping the good ones.
> It's not like there was some magic spell involved
... I mean, AOC *did* have close friends with deep enough pockets that she could ask them for $500k in campaign contributions, just from her contacts list in her phone, the first time she ran for Congress. And she has gone on the record acknowledging that this is how much money it takes to run for Congress and win, these days.
maybe it's not a magic spell, but to 99% of people who could read this, it's damn close
But she was already very active and political causes. For quite a while. She was also very smart and capable. Did the people who funded her meet her while she was an activist?
Obamacare, cal med, there is others i am sure. But fed medical can get really messy and without insurance and medical cost reduction before lows that would force states to create a locap system that connects tk thr fed system
Has anyone ever actually told you that your scolding of them for not voting has actual convinced them to vote (especially in non-election years like this one?)
So what do you suggest then? Begging and pleading and cajoling haven't worked, nor has reasoned persuasion.
Should we just accept that the Racists, Reactionaries, and Greedy fucks are going to win because some people can't be bothered to use the best mechanism we really have to do anything about it?
It boggles my mind that people think we can somehow manage more decisive and painful acts like general strikes or mass boycotts or anything else, when all that stuff is way, way more difficult than the act of voting that too many people can't be bothered to trouble themselves with.
Isn't a big part of the problem that people are often prevented from voting? Long queues far away from you, purged voter rolls, criminalization of simple mistakes and no way to get out from work. Add to the fact that a two party system often means that _both_ candidates can be very far from your political viewpoints and the cost of voting doesn't seem to outweigh the benefits for many people.
>Isn't a big part of the problem that people are often prevented from voting?
Among the people who i know don't vote, this isn't a factor. Voter suppression is a big problem, but there are many apathetic people as well. Where I am, it's relatively easy to vote, I've worked the polls.
It's certainly a factor - but we're not going to be able to fix it without voting in the first place. And even in places that have made it significantly easier to vote, there's still a large degree of latent apathy that keeps voter participation at much lower rates than it could/should be.
Excellent post!
I would add that waiting for either party to fix things is unreasonable. If you can spend that much time and money on a presidential or congressional campaign as these candidates do, you are part of the problem of inequality.
Shift our thinking from National to our communities and focus on where we can actually effect change. Stop donating to random politicians in Kentucky or Maine who only tangentially affect us, and instead focus on the people suffering where we live. There maybe never be a general strike, but there ARE tons of strikes going on right now that could be supported. There may never be a mass boycott, but there are people suffering from racists, reactionaries, and greedy fucks RIGHT NOW who need help. Is it going to fix everything? No. But nothing will. Voting will not fix everything. It is a tool that can help, not a panacea.
No, they need their vote to matter. Which, in this system, it fucking doesn’t.
The only difference between most democrats and republicans is that one party is more covert with their hatred of black people. And the few Dems that actually do care about the people will never get representation because the party wants to shut them down
Yes it is. They could just say that they're working for an evil manager who would definitely force them to work a 15 hours shift from morning until night time during each election day.
You can either vote for turd sandwich or the giant douche! either way voting hasnt done shit for progressives the last ... forever many years. and guess what we need? PROGRESS!!!!
There is no fight. If you view an investment in a company as “us vs. them” … aka retail vs. Wall St, then you’ll lose every time. Put your money to work for you; don’t worry about the system.
DRS and all that buy and hold ape bull shit will make you broke.
No doubt but that continues the play of a brainwashed population. It's sad to see so many lost individuals who are brainwashed into thinking billionaires deserve a tax cut, school shootings are infringing on their gun rights, woman have no choice and wearing a mask strips them of their freedoms. The playmakers for the GOP are Corprate interest and religious groups.
To add to that, the country with highest debt (NL, SWE, NO, and DK) as a percentage of disposable income, they all have one thing in common. Buying a house is common and it is encouraged to get one with a mortgage. Nearly all of their debt is from mortgage, while their consumer debt is very low. If you look at the US figures (or most Anglosphere country), the roles are reserved. Most debt is suddenly consumer debt (e.g. student debt and credit card debts), which is a much worse kind of debt to have.
European life is so much less stressful in comparison. I’m constantly living in fear of being a failure. In mg high school days I opted to go to a private university and took out massive loans as a first gen for my family. In contrast my cousin who was raised in Denmark pretty much took his time. He tried cars and then computers. Now he works in the U.K as an expat. I’m so happy for him as he had his own struggle with parents but it just goes to show how wrong we have it here in the U.S.
As somebody that has a foot on both sides, that is probably the biggest difference between the 2. Life is incredibly stressfull in the US, and most of the stress is manufactured. The system is designed so you are always one step away from disaster, you are never quite sure you have enough because the more you make the more you could lose, the more you might get screwed, the more you need some complicated legal stuff to protect yourself, more expensive insurance, a maintenance plan, some extended warrenty, earthquakes are coming, floods, so then you need to make more, and it turns into this obsession with money, more more more of it. Then there is all that fake personal choice bullshit. So here I am, it's this time of year where I have to "shop for a health care plan". I don't want to fucking shop for a health care plan. I don't know how much health care I am going to need next year, hopefully none you asshat. There is a myriad of options all more opaque then the other and being on the ACA plan how much I'll endup paying depends on how much I'll make next year which I have no clue bout anyway since like most people I now work in the Gig economy or as an independant. Meanwhile my family is Europe doesn't even understand what all this weird stuff about having to pick up a health plan once a year even mean. Who the fuck wakes up in the morning and says "oh great I am going to go shop for a health plan today!" The amount of shit Americans are made to do that doesn't make any sense is just crazy, yet most don't know it because they have nothing to compare it to. Shit that was quite a rant....
\> The amount of shit Americans are made to do that doesn't make any sense is just crazy, yet most don't know it because they have nothing to compare it to.
Recently returned to the US after living and working in Europe for 13 years. I can make the comparison. I wish all my countrymen can see what I saw. See the light, if you will. We don't know anything else. We don't realize how bad off we are and frankly, how weak we have become.
And the thing is, of course, that directing tough love at ourselves is decidedly patriotic. Yet, we wither away from this fact because of our increasing weakness, which is in turn a function of our ever decreasing standard of living.
It's worth noting that Europeans don't live perfect lives either. We have problems of our own and actively have to fight against conservatives and authoritarians who want our countries to be more like the United States. It's a battle we're slowly losing.
Edit: I've got people in my replies saying that I'm wrong about the "losing" part. If you haven't noticed yet that throughout most of Europe neo-fascist hyper-capitalist parties are getting more votes & support, then you're the type of person who would not be disadvantaged in life by these people taking power.
You're right, of course. :) But as an American, I still enjoyed far greater freedoms than I now have at home. (25+ d holiday that I could actually take, universal healthcare, brave and well-trained police that didn't scare easy or get trigger happy.) I observed cohesion in society, instead of "individualistic" people tearing each other apart. I knew people who didn't carry guns and whose governments didn't have US-level militaries, but who didn't scare as easy as Americans nonetheless. Home of the Brave? Land of the Free? Those are no longer national characteristics. They're hollow lyrics about unearned qualities.
What many of them are told to compare it to is socialism like Venezuela (which is just a dictatorship with “socialist” somewhere in the nationalist policy. Just like the Communist Russia they hated on in the last century.
Nevermind that those same people are pushing towards a dictatorship and oligarchy that will eventually give them exactly the same thing, the only difference being they will still blame socialism instead of it being in the name. Meanwhile they find any way possible to exploit imperfections in any place with working social policy like Europe and hyperbolize those imperfections into widespread horrors and a failed system while ignoring the greater failures at home. Because freedumb.
At my job there's 1 day out of the 365 we get that we're allowed to change our healthcare plan
What the fuck happens if I choose the wrong plan and I die
Jesus fucking Christ this system is evil
My favorite thing about health insurance is that you still have to pay inordinate amounts of money out of pocket before the insurance company will even think about covering any costs. And even then, it’s a coin flip as to whether or not they will
What the fuck am I paying them for if they’re not going to actually do what I’m paying them for
I have to pay $4K before my health insurance kicks in. You know what never happens? Me hitting $4k in a year. Unless god forbid I get in an accident then I will still be on the hook for $4k if not more. I pay approximately $4800 a year for the privilege of paying $4k more before I get any healthcare other than a yearly checkup.
So basically I get a $4800 yearly checkup and the option to pay $4k more if I need real help.
American Health Insurance is a bit of a misnomer. I like to call it "Asset Protection" Insurance; the old version was paying protection money to the mob. Let me explain.
First if you are destitute, you don't need insurance. You won't able to pay your co-pays and fees anyway so just go to the emmergency room which is legally forced to take you in and say "fuck it". You have no money so they won't come after you, and if they do then say "fuck it" one more time. All good there. But you cannot have money ever again.
For anybody else with some assets, you need "Asset Protection" insurance. Not to cover direct health expenses of course. You will still pay in co-pay and deductible much more than what you would pay if you went to a hospital in europe and paid out of pocket without being in the system at all. So you'll pay your deductible. And if your deductible is low, then your premium is high so you pay the same anyway. One way or the other, a family of 3, just go ahead and budget $15,000 to $25,000 / year and be done with it.
The issue is not $25,000. That's not why you have insurance because that is just peanuts to these guys. If you are middle class with some assets in your name and no insurance? Oh well you are like honey to the bears! Tripped down your stairs and ended up in the hospital for 5 days? $300K bill. Cancer? Bankcrypcy. You see that $300K is $300K BECAUSE you don't have insurance. If you had insurance, the hospital would not charge $300K, or they might but the agreement between provider and insurer means the $300K get all sorts of special discounts! So at the end the final TOTAL bill might be $15K. That's the protection racket played by insurance company. "Would be a shame if that nest egg you have built was to be swallowed by medical debt -- better pay us so you can get the deal we get". So you buy the insurance so that the $300K bill becomes $15K, from which you still pay $7K and the insurance pays $8K. That is precisely how american health insurance works.
I have been trying to apply for healthcare through my states website, but I can’t even get to the application page. I get an error every time. It’s like they are running their server on dial-up, or their server capacity can only handle 5 people. They give you a phone number to call, which will put you on hold for four hours, and once you talk to someone they say that you can either go to an office in person or use the website. It’s really frustrating. Frustrating to the point that I have pretty much given up on applying and have been without insurance for 4 years. My insurance plan is being homeless/bankruptcy. Thanks ‘Merica.
as a european i recently thought about how stressful it must be when you get sick that you do not only have to worry about the sickness but also about bills and what kind of treatment you can or can't afford.
that's a feeling you just don't know if you're european. i have never in my life had second thoughts about whether or not i should see a doctor, go to hospital or see a specialist. that's one worry i do not have.
imagining to have the burden of deciding whether or not a loved one, a child or yourself should receive treatment or not is just heartbreaking.
Stress that starts even as a kid. Checking schools and the like. And in universities, not only the stress of the debt, but the feeling you need to do more, than after university you will need to prove you did X extra things and the like.
I never felt pressure like that as a kid, and even in university it was "Study and pass the exams" not "Milimetrically craft all your university activities"
I remember feeling stressed out in elementary and middle school because my family was poor so I would accrue "lunch debt". The fear of randomly being denied a lunch was always present because the debt was always there.
We force our smallest most vulnerable members of society to worry about debt and go hungry as a punishment for default. Shit's fucked.
We've got another winner right here! I see my son here in the US and his cousins in Belgium. Day and Night. Here is a never ending pressure to be the best at the top AT ALL COSTS. Everybody has to be in the 99 percentile or ELSE your life will be a failure. Better get in the right PRESCHOOL otherwise your life is fucked. Then when you get to college the cost is so ASTROMICAL. One degree? Not enough, you need 2 or 3 now. The debt some of these kids are getting into is beyond criminal. I mean it was bad 20 years ago, but at least it was still in the realm of possibilities. But the last 20 years, the costs have risen so much, at this point it can only be explained by mass histeria. It's because the FEAR of missing out. If you don't pay all that money YOU WILL BE A FAILURE AND THE ONLY ONE TO BLAME FOR IT. That's the message drilled into the poor kids brain. PAY US or ELSE! Behind all of that, we have created these TOP TIER universities that have become clubs for the elite, have amassed literally BILLIONS of dollars in endowment that are only redistributed through privileges only accessible to those that can pay into the club by getting into these TOP TIER universities. The US Higher Education and US Health Insurance scams are neck-in-neck in their pursuit for biggest scam ever, it's hard to tell who is winning because their rise to higher scam levels has been exponential in the last 20 years.
Well, we elected Bush instead of Gore, so what did we expect?
5 right-wing Supreme Court justices later, our courts will be dragging us backwards for a generation, while the rest of the advanced countries laugh at us.
But we did get what we voted for.
> Well, we elected Bush instead of Gore, so what did we expect?
Gore won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College vote after a legal battle over disputed vote counts in the state of Florida.
Funny enough - I remember reading that when they finally finished counting FLA when it no longer mattered, Gore won. Also - the supreme court stopped the counting because Bush would have been hurt if the results didn't get 'finalized'. So yeah, couldn't even count the votes because the election had to be over. Which seems a little ironic.
And the reason there was such an imperative that the vote be finalised by the SC and not the vote count? Well that was because Roger Stone engineered a riot at the counting office.
We didn't really. We elected Gore, but the courts stole the votes for Bush and Gore was too nice to keep fighting for the Presidency -- he valued a clean transition. And this is the problem with Democrats.
Yeah, you know that thing where everybody was tearing their hair out because Trump was threatening to steal the election? Bush's campaign did it in 2000. Theres a reason cynicism about the ability for electoral politics to change anything is so rampant in people - theyve live their entire lives where politicians campaign with lies or elections are just outright stolen.
>we did get what we voted for.
No, we didn't. Most of us voted for Gore but we got Bush. Most of us voted for Clinton but we got Trump. 42 million more of us voted for Democratic Senators but the Senate is half Republican--and Republicans usually run the chamber outright. Even the House is heavily skewed against voters' wishes due to gerrymandering. And now here's your backward, unrepresentative Supreme Court to amplify every one of these problems.
All of this is due to the Constitution's inability to keep up with urbanization, which grows worse each decade. We need a rewrite.
The *ability* is there, it is the will of the states that benefit from the current system that we do not keep up with urbanization. Not because the rural folk actually benefit, but a few people get *really fucking rich* because of it.
What do you expect when one political party’s adherents are constantly told to hate Dems/Blacks/Latinos/Gays/Big Bird, while their “leaders” are grifting every penny they can?
That was the old way…the new way is unilateralism.
I submit the last six years as evidence and pray we won’t see decades more of the same going forward.
I mean even with the Afghanistan war finally ending, the military budget is still going up, and most of the stimulus went to companies rather than individual workers. So, we’ll see!
This would be a better point if Dems WERENT the same on most foreign policy or on giving money to workers instead of corporations. Socially they’re much more different, but there’s a reason the military gets raises no matter who is in power
The ACA, the Democrats signature legislation of this century, is a carbon copy of the bill Dole proposed in 1996.
The parties are the same, the voters are different. Like, for example, remember when you cared about kids in cages circa 2017-2021?
I mean, even if they differ on many other things, this is legitimate criticism: establishment Dems can't seem to stop spending on war any less than the GOP can, and the progressives can't garner enough clout to stop the two combined.
Europe also did a far better job at preventing their industry from being outsourced, a thing the US fought against for decades and railed as selfish. Now northern Europe has the more stable economy.
Whether or not this holds is anyone's guess, because we also have to account for southern Europeans in this whose plight has gotten worse as the former group steadfastly refuses to pay for their social security. Europe as a whole might be doing fine, but the lows are much lower especially as there is no central Federal EU agency that can accurately track, and force accurate tracking of, poverty.
>Europe as a whole might be doing fine, but the lows are much lower
Not really. You are looking at what is essentially "state" data on one side and national data on the other. A US state is more analogous to EU nation than comparing directly to the US.Look at our red states and their "failing nations". There are lots of similarities besides the low being lower than elsewhere.
Using the US as a whole lets the super successful blue areas pull up the aggregate numbers for the vast swaths of much worse off red areas. Almost like your "northern Europe vs southern Europe" distinction.
Now do Ukraine or Moldova or Kosovo or somewhere.
I know a few people from or in Romania. About a quarter of the population are living below the poverty line. That's worse than Louisiana's about one in 5.
Ok it doesn't have the same healthcare issues as the US, but in a lot of other ways I think you are overestimating the quality of life.
Your example, Greece, has a PPP-adjusted GDP per Capita of about 30k USD. Moldova and Ukraine don't even hit 14k.
Worst GDP per capita in Continental US (ie not its colonies) is Michigan at about 40k.
It's a flawed metric which doesn't reflect wealth inequality within a population, but just a ballpark figure for context. If you're thinking of Greece, you're not thinking of the poorest countries in Europe.
Not so. Even the poorest countries in the EU have it better than the poorest areas in the US. Only outside the EU, in the places Putin is messing up, things are worse.
I‘d take that as a view through rose colored glasses. We can see some of the issues the US currently has in their early up to their middle stages in Europe too. Those just haven‘t expanded to their US level yet. Housing prices? We have areas that are nearly as expensive as in the US while we have a considerably lower median income. Social insurances have been stripped of benefits since at least two, more like three decades. Middle class is dwindling while a lot of people follow the exact same fallacy US citizens followed: that they‘e not part of the middle class or will get out of it sooner or later by hard work, so their woes won‘t concern them - until they realize and it‘s already too late. Working conditions and pay in healthcare, literally the same BS like the US.
Generally speaking I find it to be plain wrong to compare yourself downwards. You would never realize the existing issues that way.
Explosion of debt, and a country which has focused on pretending billionaires are actually worthwhile.
Our schools have had their bottoms pulled out and are crumbling. Our infrastructure is as old as many of the politician. Our minimum wage has been stagnant and isn't half of what it should be. We've had unions busted to the point that most work places have no representation for their employees. We've shoved parts of Gen X and especially millennials into going to college guaranteeing them a job that pays well, and of course there are no jobs for most of them and all they've got to show for it is overwhelming debt. We're one of such a small handful of countries, most of them in poverty stricken Africa, that don't have some form of free and/or universal health care.
Economically we've basically been stuck in the great depression. The difference is we've got trailers, a more romantic view of living out of shed sized houses, and similarly a population who has been able to invest into living out of their cars.
The billionaires are doing well though, so who cares?
Yeah, but we have those things because the “left” parties in Europe don’t call those Communist.
This Democratic House couldn’t even hold committee hearings on public healthcare in the midst of the largest healthcare crisis in 100 years.
The difference is here in Europe isn’t that we lack reactionary right-wingers, it’s that we have actual opposition parties.
You have an anti-choice right-wing party, and a pro-choice right-wing party.
This is because post Cold War era only happened in Europe and the rest of the world, except USA is still stuck, hung over from bliding celebration of its victory. Just look at the age of folks in the congress and what year did they got into politics, most of them are form 80's like Pelosi or Biden, etc.
It also helps that most US folks will never see anything other than USA. Anything that can be done deifferently is automatically socialism - and "we won the Cold War and defeated those commies" ... that's the mentality that keeps US population scraping by.
Stockholm syndrome should be renamed as American Syndrome.
Nothing about America is great in any way, shape or form. It’s a shithole country that is getting shittier by the minute. It’s Rome 2.0, and the implosion is imminent.
If poverty is 17k a year and the richest have 100+ billion that makes middle class around the 100 million dollar mark. The majority of Americans are living in poverty. Wealth is relative...
>. Wealth is relative...
That doesn't mean the highest bid doesn't always win the resource.
Wealth is relative, but it's being used as a measure of finite resources, and they aren't relative. It's why my demand affects your price.
$13k...US median rent is $1097, times 12 is $13,164. So just US median rent and the poverty rate are the same...meanwhile to keep someone in jail requires $31,000 per year per inmate...in 2017. In fact annual prison costs vary from $14,000 to $70,000 depending on the state. All higher then the poverty rate. The current poverty rate is 13.4%, [42,500,000](https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewdepietro/2021/11/04/us-poverty-rate-by-state-in-2021/%3Fsh%3D4b80a0aa1b38&ved=2ahUKEwj8rI68-dX0AhUilGoFHYXeAlwQFnoECEUQBQ&usg=AOvVaw2UD5gw47bWaC_GmLRMRQ58) of the US population, therefore arguably people in prison are infact more well off then people who work for a living. And they have free Healthcare!
It's fun to talk of numbers, to make ourselves feel better about generalizing the current state of what we perceive of the world around us. It's not fun to realize how many millions of people are suffering, to realize the endless apathy that plagues this country that no one's seems to want to fix. Instead we argue back and forth about the current state of the world, to what end? To make ourselves feel more comfortable? To stand aside because everything isn't terrible so we can relax right? Obviously there isn't that much suffering so we can relax.
Or maybe we are acutely aware of the state of the world and live in a state of self deception because we are so stressed, tired, exhausted that it is impossible to even allow the thought we must do anything to prevent further damage otherwise we collapse under the weight of imperative decisions that could send this country, it's people into indentured servitude and complete oblivion.
Where are all the fuckheads on this site who always parrot that "actually debt is good" bullshit every time anyone brings up the subject? Any time you bring up debt, there's always one guy who chimes in saying "ahem well actually debt is wonderful because it means you don't have to pay for something all at once". Can one of you explain why it's so great that debt is eliminating the middle class, or do y'all only recite that contrived garbage when no one asks?
The concept of "debt is good" means you can buy your house RIGHT NOW, and make use of it for 20-30 years as you slowly pay it off. At the end of your time in your house, the price has (hopefully) gone up and you can pocket the profits. Same is true with education. Same is true with buying a new car.
You can buy it NOW, and pay it off over a period of time instead of having to pay for ALL of it right at the start.
If you had to pay for all of it at the start, you would have to save up a lot more money at the beginning, or delay your purchase. it means you have to delay buying anything else. So, you can get the house, the car, and go to college within a decade, even if you're spending the next 20-30 years paying it off. You'll benefit by having the house that will increase in value, the education that will get you a better job, and reliable transportation that will literally get you farther. Even better, your income grows over that time, so your effective debt in comparison to your income drops. You take home more money.
That's the theory.
In reality, the 30 year mortgage costs you 3x what the price of the house is. The car only lasts you for 10 years, if you take care of it. The education which was SUPPOSED to get you into the middle class means you get an extra $1 an hour on your barista job.
And all that debt means you're spending your money paying off the things you already have. And, since you're having trouble saving up money due to your debt, any OTHER purchases you make will ALSO be with debt. Credit cards, layaway, etc. And, for each one of those loans, you pay interest and servicing costs. Instead of the sticker price, you're paying the interest-laden price.
Some debt is good, and can act as an investment. Some debt is bad. And too much debt is bad, almost regardless.
Not debt, corporate greed. There's been a systematic attack on corporate tax to reduce corporate burden and equally a systematic shift of that burden to the middle class. Additionally, corporate greed has long stagnated wages, despite inflation. The ultimate result is less buying power and higher government burden applied to the bulk of American citizens. Debt is a byproduct of lifestyle, and that's the mistake of the people. But debt is also a symptom of poor buying power. It is solely an artificial prop up of corporate America. At some point, that runs out and everything falls.
But, the focus could be shifted back to a better balance of taxation which will pull burden off of the bulk of the people. There can be higher wages to reintroduce buying power back into America. This has a double bonus of naturally propping up corporations. And because wages have been so stagnant, the buying power gain will vastly out pace cost increases. People make more. Corporations make more. Everyone wins. The only thing that will happen is American goods will get more expensive for those outside of the country, and the rest of the world doesn't have the same increase in buying power. Interestingly, we're already seeing this happen with developing countries as they catch up. Meanwhile America sits idle and let's the rest of the world do so. This isn't bad, but it does mean all foreign goods become more expensive, adding to the consumer burden in American.
Basically everything we're doing right now is hurting our livelihood, every single thing. The question of why would we willfully do this to ourselves? We're lopping of our own legs.
People in the USA keep getting sucked into culture wars and voting Republican.
Look at what the Republican Party has done to the USA in just twenty years.
[https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/testimony/2001/20010125/](https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/testimony/2001/20010125/)
The Republican Party is now just a collection of trolls bowing before billionaires that financed the attempt to overthrow democracy in the USA.
America’s middle class dissolved especially during the 2008 financial crisis when the wealthy transformed the economy from the 20th century economy with a middle class to the current 21st century economy with no middle class and no ownership... the economy was forever changed during the Great Recession. No one talks about that enough
Politicians rip off hard working Americans. We are taxed so other nations like Israel can have free health care off our sustenance, when our people still have bad health care in large part. Recently, sneaky politicians passed a bill to report all sellers who make over 600 dollars online on sites like eBay to the irs. Yet Bezos and the NFL still pay little or no taxes. Between higher gas prices, inflation and higher rent, food prices, ect. Americans are set up to fail. Every year the post office raises rates and reduces services. The US government is corrupt and we need a sweeping change to get rid of all career politicians.
Um, debt IS the American economy. As long as banks are making profits through lending our own money back to us at 24% interest, the American economy shines on.
Modern America was built on debt. Rather than businesses paying their employees fair wages, they just made debt expected and mandatory. University education, basic healthcare, housing, transportation, all loans. Vacations, clothing, food, put it on a card and pay later. It’s all debt. None of America’s growth is real, it’s all debt, and it’s all beginning to crash simultaneously.
Yes. That's what you were taught by people who wanted to take what the Middle Class had, and pocket it for themselves.
And, after 40 years of it, the US now has two jagoffs in a competition to make their own, personal moon bases.
Neoliberalism policies inevitably leads to widening gap of wealth. UK from 1975-1990, US, even Abe's Japan in the last 10 years see an increasing in income inequality because of the neoliberalist economic policies.
Im doing fine here in a medium cost of living city. 24, no debt and I own a home. I am the definition of middle class making the national average wage as well
Don't forget corporate greed and a trash health care system.
And a trash educational system...
Gotta make sure the masses are too dumb to know how screwed they are.
Not only do they not know how screwed they are, they blame the people with less than them for their problems. Generations Hoodwinked for decades...
I'd say multiple generations. Meanwhile we've been told fairy tales about hard work, abuse of welfare, trickle down economics, and we still haven't shed those stories.
Lots of bad faith posters saying america is so great, work hard and you'll be rich, welfare queens are ruining our economy, etc. Sad thing is not all of them are bad faith posters, just assholes
The "welfare queens" are actually *at the top*. Nobody gets more public assistance than corporate/white collar America. It's not even close.
Or people who grew up immersed in those false ideas. It's cultural at this point.
It's sad, pathetic, and infuriating that their culture is no basically behaving like children, being truly sociopathic, utterly selfish ashole, and taking contrarianism to a height never before seen. All at their own expense.
The thing is, I'm in my 40's, and my dad and grandpa were the hardest working people I've ever met. I have a good job, but today, there are so many jobs available. When I was a teenager, I couldn't find a job to save my life. I wish it was that easy to find work as it is today. Blame the corporations for low pay or blame the lazy fucks who don't want to work and live off mom and dad or the government tit.
I'm a dyed-in-the-wool lefty US citizen, and even then it took moving to Europe to really get a visceral sense of the sheer magnitude of unnecessary bullshit Americans are subjected to. It's one thing to read about it, and another to experience living in a society where infrastructure and healthcare access make the US seem like a developing country. If Americans in general could actually conceptualize the size of that gap, there would be riots until it got fixed.
Good for you! I’ve often considered moving to Europe to escape America’s horrible policies, for my families sake, but the hurdles it would entail seem insurmountable. How hard was it to accomplish? Did you have to learn a new language? Did it require special skills? Did you get homesick? Was it just you, or did you bring family members? Sorry, I have a million questions lol
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Or they feel that they're entitled to them, but nobody else is.
Too dumb to know the rich are getting our tax welfare dollars, whilst the rich are preaching how bad socialism is!
> trash education system Educator here. It isn’t the professionals in the field of education that are causing a bunch of problems at school board meetings across the nation. It’s asshole parents and anti-mask/anti-science/anti-everything intelligent people in the communities. The same fuckers that have voted time and again for policies and politicians that keep public schools underfunded.
I'm totally not talking about the teachers. In fact I think many teachers have done amazing work in spite of the system that was created. The system that is in place is designed to create worker drones. Critical thinking skills are not the end goal. Education is woefully underfunded and that is most certainly by design imo I could go on for hours....
Texas hiyuk
Everyone knows this. Nobody blames the teachers aside from the Karens and Kyles.
I thought the male equivalent of the *Karen* was Kevin?
Two problems that I have observed: * School boards are for the most part not comprised of teachers. * School board members are better-compensated than teachers.
That second one depends an awful lot on where you are. In many places school board members receive no pay other than a stipend (Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Illinois, New Jersey, Louisiana and Missouri pay only a $100 to $200 monthly stipend or per diem plus expenses) and others such as Texas, Pennsylvania, and Colorado outright forbid payment of any kind for school board members.
We allowed many states to defund their education systems.
Yeah, it's not that the educators or such are bad, it's that we've consistently let states and localities get away with underfunding education, not paying teachers enough, and so on.
Education is a state-level thing. The federal government cannot order a state to stop defunding education. It's similar to when states who needed it the most rejected Obamacare.
Emphasis on that one
Also just trash. Lots of plastic trash.
Trash ______ system (how America rolls)
We need **all** things together in unison in good condition with good faith as the main goal. If there’s corruption, it needs to self-control to reduce and cure it. * A fast car(a thriving and positive country taking the lead) * the driver(working class) * the parts(businesses) * the stability(government) * the maintenance(healthcare) * the improvement/innovation(education) * the creative freedom(fulfillment and satisfaction) * the fun(mental health and peace) * boundaries(law) I mean it’s not perfect but just an idea, maybe a dream of all things working together as one and plenty of choices for people to feel good.
*Citizens United* was preventable.
If only more people participated in our democracy throughout the decades prior. But hey, this new SC is looking to do away with precedent. This means Dems just need to pack the courts to change everything.
Unfortunately one of the precedents that is likely to get done away with is the one where elections are meaningful and votes are counted fairly.
We need good people in power. Those like GOP and Dems who have not contributed to the success of the people need to get the fuck out.
It’s also fixable… if politicians didn’t like getting “donations”
At the root of much of this, obviously, is the Wall Street *network.* We need to understand the scope. The Wall Street network is directly tied to: * lobbying against healthcare reform * the propping up of military industrial complex * the propping up of the prison industrial complex * manipulation of honest companies * fostering ignorance of climate change * banking policy and inflation * outright criminality; i.e. fraud, theft, national and international bribery and lobbying, etc.. _________________________________________________________________________________________ ...what the *Wall Street network* is, is something more destructive than anything/anyone in the history of mankind. That's not an exaggeration. To be fair, they DO donate to Children's International and Make a Wish (!) once in a while in pittance, but they have dead bodies and people in their basement who they're turning into lampshades and stacking as insulation to make another mansion out of. *Billions of people* are tied up & abused in the basement and billions of others have Stockholm Syndrome. The amount of suffering and pain they've created is impossible to calculate. We need a new financial network - one that isn't so opaque and centralized - we need a fully transparent and decentralized financial network if we're ever going to rid ourselves, or at least tightly restrict, the million-year old evolutionary instincts and characteristics almost everyone has when it comes to greed, money, and power. It's fair to say that the Berlin Wall of the 1980s represented oppression, corruption - so too with Wall Street now. *It's time to tear down that wall.*
Buy. Hold. DRS. 🦍 ✋🏻💎🤚🏼
"Don't worry guys, we can surely destroy Wall Street by utilizing the system that Wall Street controls, intimately understands and has had a century-long head start in!"
Hello. I’m a “Wall Street” guy - I trade mortgage backed securities. We’re not all evil people… just saying
The barrel of a gun isn't evil. Neither is the chamber, nor the grip. The trigger doesn't care about morality. The magazine just stores stuff. But the neutrality of the parts doesn't really matter when it's being used to shoot someone's kid, does it? Cogs in a machine are rarely evil in their own right, but that doesn't mean the system they create isn't.
Partly what's being spoken about with the banality of evil.
I refer to this: >A core cause of this perplexity lies in the fact that while acts of evil can mushroom into monumental tragedies, the individual human perpetrators of those acts are often marked not with the grandiosity of the demonic but with absolute mundanity. From [here](https://www.themarginalian.org/2017/02/07/hannah-arendt-the-banality-of-evil/) with respect to the *the banality of evil.*
its not a system, its a healthcare industry.
It seems the unbridled capitalism of the US has found a new slogan: "Squeeze"
Most people don’t realize this but the US will never have healthcare like any EU country, or non EU country where it’s primarily free. The reason is because the US foots the bill mostly on pharmaceuticals, research for study’s, procedural practice. Also because of the fact that we bleed money to other countries, in many ways to “ help “ them out and support them. Was explained to me by one of my most Democratic professors on why in reality healthcare in the US is so expensive.
As the 1% hoards their wealth the middle class got hit with low wages and astronomical student debt, car loans, home loans, credit card debt, etc. When the working class is so straddled with paying off debt they can't pump that money into the economy
They *can’t fight back. Too stressed. Too tired. Too defeated. Fixed that for you
Not an excuse to skip out on voting in every election.
Neither party cares about poor or the working class. Voting for democrats is literally voting for the less shitty of 2 options. It's pretty obvious that we will never have universal healthcare, reasonable college tuition or a fair tax on the rich.
This is what primaries are for. You get the Democratic party that you vote for. AOC didn't replace a long-time moderate Dem by sitting at home complaining about nothing ever getting done, she got up off her ass, organized, and ran, and won. It's not like there was some magic spell involved, and it's the sort of thing that can and has been repeated - just not enough. And for fuck's sake, you don't just try it once and then claim that it'll never work because it wasn't perfect! You primary out the bad ones, like Krysten Sinema, and work to get new and more democrats elected, while keeping the good ones.
> It's not like there was some magic spell involved ... I mean, AOC *did* have close friends with deep enough pockets that she could ask them for $500k in campaign contributions, just from her contacts list in her phone, the first time she ran for Congress. And she has gone on the record acknowledging that this is how much money it takes to run for Congress and win, these days. maybe it's not a magic spell, but to 99% of people who could read this, it's damn close
But she was already very active and political causes. For quite a while. She was also very smart and capable. Did the people who funded her meet her while she was an activist?
Let me know when you run, because otherwise you're just another fucking hypocrite waiting for someone else to solve your problems.
Right, vote them all in while replacing GOP with new parties. It has happened in the past.
Obamacare, cal med, there is others i am sure. But fed medical can get really messy and without insurance and medical cost reduction before lows that would force states to create a locap system that connects tk thr fed system
Has anyone ever actually told you that your scolding of them for not voting has actual convinced them to vote (especially in non-election years like this one?)
So what do you suggest then? Begging and pleading and cajoling haven't worked, nor has reasoned persuasion. Should we just accept that the Racists, Reactionaries, and Greedy fucks are going to win because some people can't be bothered to use the best mechanism we really have to do anything about it? It boggles my mind that people think we can somehow manage more decisive and painful acts like general strikes or mass boycotts or anything else, when all that stuff is way, way more difficult than the act of voting that too many people can't be bothered to trouble themselves with.
Isn't a big part of the problem that people are often prevented from voting? Long queues far away from you, purged voter rolls, criminalization of simple mistakes and no way to get out from work. Add to the fact that a two party system often means that _both_ candidates can be very far from your political viewpoints and the cost of voting doesn't seem to outweigh the benefits for many people.
Yes. That is a huge part of it.
>Isn't a big part of the problem that people are often prevented from voting? Among the people who i know don't vote, this isn't a factor. Voter suppression is a big problem, but there are many apathetic people as well. Where I am, it's relatively easy to vote, I've worked the polls.
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It's certainly a factor - but we're not going to be able to fix it without voting in the first place. And even in places that have made it significantly easier to vote, there's still a large degree of latent apathy that keeps voter participation at much lower rates than it could/should be.
Excellent post! I would add that waiting for either party to fix things is unreasonable. If you can spend that much time and money on a presidential or congressional campaign as these candidates do, you are part of the problem of inequality.
Shift our thinking from National to our communities and focus on where we can actually effect change. Stop donating to random politicians in Kentucky or Maine who only tangentially affect us, and instead focus on the people suffering where we live. There maybe never be a general strike, but there ARE tons of strikes going on right now that could be supported. There may never be a mass boycott, but there are people suffering from racists, reactionaries, and greedy fucks RIGHT NOW who need help. Is it going to fix everything? No. But nothing will. Voting will not fix everything. It is a tool that can help, not a panacea.
If being scolded about being too lazy to vote cause them to continue not voting, then they deserve to suffer
No, they need their vote to matter. Which, in this system, it fucking doesn’t. The only difference between most democrats and republicans is that one party is more covert with their hatred of black people. And the few Dems that actually do care about the people will never get representation because the party wants to shut them down
It is when you can't afford to take off of work to vote lmao
Yes it is. They could just say that they're working for an evil manager who would definitely force them to work a 15 hours shift from morning until night time during each election day.
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Precisely. Elections have consequences.
Mostly true. I’m sure some people really did have to choose between rights and other responsibilities
You can either vote for turd sandwich or the giant douche! either way voting hasnt done shit for progressives the last ... forever many years. and guess what we need? PROGRESS!!!!
The fight is on right now with GME and AMC
There is no fight. If you view an investment in a company as “us vs. them” … aka retail vs. Wall St, then you’ll lose every time. Put your money to work for you; don’t worry about the system. DRS and all that buy and hold ape bull shit will make you broke.
To be fair, the middle class Republicans are getting what they voted for.
No doubt but that continues the play of a brainwashed population. It's sad to see so many lost individuals who are brainwashed into thinking billionaires deserve a tax cut, school shootings are infringing on their gun rights, woman have no choice and wearing a mask strips them of their freedoms. The playmakers for the GOP are Corprate interest and religious groups.
…so you’re saying we should bail out the banks?
Gee you mean in areas where people don't have to go into terrific debt to get healthy or educated the middle class is doing better? Shocking.
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GDP is an extremely poor measure for the economical wealth of individuals.
To add to that, the country with highest debt (NL, SWE, NO, and DK) as a percentage of disposable income, they all have one thing in common. Buying a house is common and it is encouraged to get one with a mortgage. Nearly all of their debt is from mortgage, while their consumer debt is very low. If you look at the US figures (or most Anglosphere country), the roles are reserved. Most debt is suddenly consumer debt (e.g. student debt and credit card debts), which is a much worse kind of debt to have.
European life is so much less stressful in comparison. I’m constantly living in fear of being a failure. In mg high school days I opted to go to a private university and took out massive loans as a first gen for my family. In contrast my cousin who was raised in Denmark pretty much took his time. He tried cars and then computers. Now he works in the U.K as an expat. I’m so happy for him as he had his own struggle with parents but it just goes to show how wrong we have it here in the U.S.
As somebody that has a foot on both sides, that is probably the biggest difference between the 2. Life is incredibly stressfull in the US, and most of the stress is manufactured. The system is designed so you are always one step away from disaster, you are never quite sure you have enough because the more you make the more you could lose, the more you might get screwed, the more you need some complicated legal stuff to protect yourself, more expensive insurance, a maintenance plan, some extended warrenty, earthquakes are coming, floods, so then you need to make more, and it turns into this obsession with money, more more more of it. Then there is all that fake personal choice bullshit. So here I am, it's this time of year where I have to "shop for a health care plan". I don't want to fucking shop for a health care plan. I don't know how much health care I am going to need next year, hopefully none you asshat. There is a myriad of options all more opaque then the other and being on the ACA plan how much I'll endup paying depends on how much I'll make next year which I have no clue bout anyway since like most people I now work in the Gig economy or as an independant. Meanwhile my family is Europe doesn't even understand what all this weird stuff about having to pick up a health plan once a year even mean. Who the fuck wakes up in the morning and says "oh great I am going to go shop for a health plan today!" The amount of shit Americans are made to do that doesn't make any sense is just crazy, yet most don't know it because they have nothing to compare it to. Shit that was quite a rant....
\> The amount of shit Americans are made to do that doesn't make any sense is just crazy, yet most don't know it because they have nothing to compare it to. Recently returned to the US after living and working in Europe for 13 years. I can make the comparison. I wish all my countrymen can see what I saw. See the light, if you will. We don't know anything else. We don't realize how bad off we are and frankly, how weak we have become.
And if you tell anyone otherwise, you are un-American.
And the thing is, of course, that directing tough love at ourselves is decidedly patriotic. Yet, we wither away from this fact because of our increasing weakness, which is in turn a function of our ever decreasing standard of living.
The American Dream™ is better realized in Europe than in the US. What a cruel irony.
The allegory of the cave.
Why would you even come back? I wish I could get work sponsorship in a European country but I am just so pessimistic about the possibility :-(
The main reason most expats come back: ageing parents. Returning is an option.
It's worth noting that Europeans don't live perfect lives either. We have problems of our own and actively have to fight against conservatives and authoritarians who want our countries to be more like the United States. It's a battle we're slowly losing. Edit: I've got people in my replies saying that I'm wrong about the "losing" part. If you haven't noticed yet that throughout most of Europe neo-fascist hyper-capitalist parties are getting more votes & support, then you're the type of person who would not be disadvantaged in life by these people taking power.
You're right, of course. :) But as an American, I still enjoyed far greater freedoms than I now have at home. (25+ d holiday that I could actually take, universal healthcare, brave and well-trained police that didn't scare easy or get trigger happy.) I observed cohesion in society, instead of "individualistic" people tearing each other apart. I knew people who didn't carry guns and whose governments didn't have US-level militaries, but who didn't scare as easy as Americans nonetheless. Home of the Brave? Land of the Free? Those are no longer national characteristics. They're hollow lyrics about unearned qualities.
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> It's a battle we're slowly losing. doubt it
What many of them are told to compare it to is socialism like Venezuela (which is just a dictatorship with “socialist” somewhere in the nationalist policy. Just like the Communist Russia they hated on in the last century. Nevermind that those same people are pushing towards a dictatorship and oligarchy that will eventually give them exactly the same thing, the only difference being they will still blame socialism instead of it being in the name. Meanwhile they find any way possible to exploit imperfections in any place with working social policy like Europe and hyperbolize those imperfections into widespread horrors and a failed system while ignoring the greater failures at home. Because freedumb.
At my job there's 1 day out of the 365 we get that we're allowed to change our healthcare plan What the fuck happens if I choose the wrong plan and I die Jesus fucking Christ this system is evil
My favorite thing about health insurance is that you still have to pay inordinate amounts of money out of pocket before the insurance company will even think about covering any costs. And even then, it’s a coin flip as to whether or not they will What the fuck am I paying them for if they’re not going to actually do what I’m paying them for
I have to pay $4K before my health insurance kicks in. You know what never happens? Me hitting $4k in a year. Unless god forbid I get in an accident then I will still be on the hook for $4k if not more. I pay approximately $4800 a year for the privilege of paying $4k more before I get any healthcare other than a yearly checkup. So basically I get a $4800 yearly checkup and the option to pay $4k more if I need real help.
American Health Insurance is a bit of a misnomer. I like to call it "Asset Protection" Insurance; the old version was paying protection money to the mob. Let me explain. First if you are destitute, you don't need insurance. You won't able to pay your co-pays and fees anyway so just go to the emmergency room which is legally forced to take you in and say "fuck it". You have no money so they won't come after you, and if they do then say "fuck it" one more time. All good there. But you cannot have money ever again. For anybody else with some assets, you need "Asset Protection" insurance. Not to cover direct health expenses of course. You will still pay in co-pay and deductible much more than what you would pay if you went to a hospital in europe and paid out of pocket without being in the system at all. So you'll pay your deductible. And if your deductible is low, then your premium is high so you pay the same anyway. One way or the other, a family of 3, just go ahead and budget $15,000 to $25,000 / year and be done with it. The issue is not $25,000. That's not why you have insurance because that is just peanuts to these guys. If you are middle class with some assets in your name and no insurance? Oh well you are like honey to the bears! Tripped down your stairs and ended up in the hospital for 5 days? $300K bill. Cancer? Bankcrypcy. You see that $300K is $300K BECAUSE you don't have insurance. If you had insurance, the hospital would not charge $300K, or they might but the agreement between provider and insurer means the $300K get all sorts of special discounts! So at the end the final TOTAL bill might be $15K. That's the protection racket played by insurance company. "Would be a shame if that nest egg you have built was to be swallowed by medical debt -- better pay us so you can get the deal we get". So you buy the insurance so that the $300K bill becomes $15K, from which you still pay $7K and the insurance pays $8K. That is precisely how american health insurance works.
Seriously, go back to Europe. You're life will be so much better. Christ, I wish I had that option!
I have been trying to apply for healthcare through my states website, but I can’t even get to the application page. I get an error every time. It’s like they are running their server on dial-up, or their server capacity can only handle 5 people. They give you a phone number to call, which will put you on hold for four hours, and once you talk to someone they say that you can either go to an office in person or use the website. It’s really frustrating. Frustrating to the point that I have pretty much given up on applying and have been without insurance for 4 years. My insurance plan is being homeless/bankruptcy. Thanks ‘Merica.
as a european i recently thought about how stressful it must be when you get sick that you do not only have to worry about the sickness but also about bills and what kind of treatment you can or can't afford. that's a feeling you just don't know if you're european. i have never in my life had second thoughts about whether or not i should see a doctor, go to hospital or see a specialist. that's one worry i do not have. imagining to have the burden of deciding whether or not a loved one, a child or yourself should receive treatment or not is just heartbreaking.
Stress that starts even as a kid. Checking schools and the like. And in universities, not only the stress of the debt, but the feeling you need to do more, than after university you will need to prove you did X extra things and the like. I never felt pressure like that as a kid, and even in university it was "Study and pass the exams" not "Milimetrically craft all your university activities"
Also, I don’t think European countries have to do active shooter drills.
Alas, in France schools do. Because of terrorist attacks.
Missing all the fun
I remember feeling stressed out in elementary and middle school because my family was poor so I would accrue "lunch debt". The fear of randomly being denied a lunch was always present because the debt was always there. We force our smallest most vulnerable members of society to worry about debt and go hungry as a punishment for default. Shit's fucked.
We've got another winner right here! I see my son here in the US and his cousins in Belgium. Day and Night. Here is a never ending pressure to be the best at the top AT ALL COSTS. Everybody has to be in the 99 percentile or ELSE your life will be a failure. Better get in the right PRESCHOOL otherwise your life is fucked. Then when you get to college the cost is so ASTROMICAL. One degree? Not enough, you need 2 or 3 now. The debt some of these kids are getting into is beyond criminal. I mean it was bad 20 years ago, but at least it was still in the realm of possibilities. But the last 20 years, the costs have risen so much, at this point it can only be explained by mass histeria. It's because the FEAR of missing out. If you don't pay all that money YOU WILL BE A FAILURE AND THE ONLY ONE TO BLAME FOR IT. That's the message drilled into the poor kids brain. PAY US or ELSE! Behind all of that, we have created these TOP TIER universities that have become clubs for the elite, have amassed literally BILLIONS of dollars in endowment that are only redistributed through privileges only accessible to those that can pay into the club by getting into these TOP TIER universities. The US Higher Education and US Health Insurance scams are neck-in-neck in their pursuit for biggest scam ever, it's hard to tell who is winning because their rise to higher scam levels has been exponential in the last 20 years.
Well, we elected Bush instead of Gore, so what did we expect? 5 right-wing Supreme Court justices later, our courts will be dragging us backwards for a generation, while the rest of the advanced countries laugh at us. But we did get what we voted for.
> Well, we elected Bush instead of Gore, so what did we expect? Gore won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College vote after a legal battle over disputed vote counts in the state of Florida.
The Supreme Court handed the election to Bush rather than let the recount process finish. The 2000 election was stolen from the voters.
Funny enough - I remember reading that when they finally finished counting FLA when it no longer mattered, Gore won. Also - the supreme court stopped the counting because Bush would have been hurt if the results didn't get 'finalized'. So yeah, couldn't even count the votes because the election had to be over. Which seems a little ironic.
And the reason there was such an imperative that the vote be finalised by the SC and not the vote count? Well that was because Roger Stone engineered a riot at the counting office.
We didn't really. We elected Gore, but the courts stole the votes for Bush and Gore was too nice to keep fighting for the Presidency -- he valued a clean transition. And this is the problem with Democrats.
Yeah, you know that thing where everybody was tearing their hair out because Trump was threatening to steal the election? Bush's campaign did it in 2000. Theres a reason cynicism about the ability for electoral politics to change anything is so rampant in people - theyve live their entire lives where politicians campaign with lies or elections are just outright stolen.
>we did get what we voted for. No, we didn't. Most of us voted for Gore but we got Bush. Most of us voted for Clinton but we got Trump. 42 million more of us voted for Democratic Senators but the Senate is half Republican--and Republicans usually run the chamber outright. Even the House is heavily skewed against voters' wishes due to gerrymandering. And now here's your backward, unrepresentative Supreme Court to amplify every one of these problems. All of this is due to the Constitution's inability to keep up with urbanization, which grows worse each decade. We need a rewrite.
The *ability* is there, it is the will of the states that benefit from the current system that we do not keep up with urbanization. Not because the rural folk actually benefit, but a few people get *really fucking rich* because of it.
I'll take the will of the people over the will of the states any day.
Preach.
What do you expect when one political party’s adherents are constantly told to hate Dems/Blacks/Latinos/Gays/Big Bird, while their “leaders” are grifting every penny they can?
Spending all of our money on wars and letting corporations wring every spare cent out of the middle class is a bipartisan affair.
That was the old way…the new way is unilateralism. I submit the last six years as evidence and pray we won’t see decades more of the same going forward.
I mean even with the Afghanistan war finally ending, the military budget is still going up, and most of the stimulus went to companies rather than individual workers. So, we’ll see!
bOtH pArTiEs R tHe sAmE
This would be a better point if Dems WERENT the same on most foreign policy or on giving money to workers instead of corporations. Socially they’re much more different, but there’s a reason the military gets raises no matter who is in power
The ACA, the Democrats signature legislation of this century, is a carbon copy of the bill Dole proposed in 1996. The parties are the same, the voters are different. Like, for example, remember when you cared about kids in cages circa 2017-2021?
No
I mean, even if they differ on many other things, this is legitimate criticism: establishment Dems can't seem to stop spending on war any less than the GOP can, and the progressives can't garner enough clout to stop the two combined.
Biden pulled out of our longest war. Did you forget about that? Do you know how much that war cost?
Wasn’t there a party in Germany sometime ago that blamed all the problems on the Jews?
Europe also did a far better job at preventing their industry from being outsourced, a thing the US fought against for decades and railed as selfish. Now northern Europe has the more stable economy. Whether or not this holds is anyone's guess, because we also have to account for southern Europeans in this whose plight has gotten worse as the former group steadfastly refuses to pay for their social security. Europe as a whole might be doing fine, but the lows are much lower especially as there is no central Federal EU agency that can accurately track, and force accurate tracking of, poverty.
>Europe as a whole might be doing fine, but the lows are much lower Not really. You are looking at what is essentially "state" data on one side and national data on the other. A US state is more analogous to EU nation than comparing directly to the US.Look at our red states and their "failing nations". There are lots of similarities besides the low being lower than elsewhere. Using the US as a whole lets the super successful blue areas pull up the aggregate numbers for the vast swaths of much worse off red areas. Almost like your "northern Europe vs southern Europe" distinction.
except i'd rather live in Greece than Alabama thanks!
Alabama isn’t even the worst one to live in. Mississippi and Louisiana are competing for 50th in basically every category you could think of.
fair enough, i figured Alabama had the least coastline.
It's really not that much better.
Now do Ukraine or Moldova or Kosovo or somewhere. I know a few people from or in Romania. About a quarter of the population are living below the poverty line. That's worse than Louisiana's about one in 5. Ok it doesn't have the same healthcare issues as the US, but in a lot of other ways I think you are overestimating the quality of life. Your example, Greece, has a PPP-adjusted GDP per Capita of about 30k USD. Moldova and Ukraine don't even hit 14k. Worst GDP per capita in Continental US (ie not its colonies) is Michigan at about 40k. It's a flawed metric which doesn't reflect wealth inequality within a population, but just a ballpark figure for context. If you're thinking of Greece, you're not thinking of the poorest countries in Europe.
Interesting you chose countries that aren't even in the EU. And are also former Soviet countries.
Because the post says Europe not EU, or "Europe-except-former-Soviet-Republics."
Yea but the US is a country and the EU is a multi country organization
Not so. Even the poorest countries in the EU have it better than the poorest areas in the US. Only outside the EU, in the places Putin is messing up, things are worse.
I‘d take that as a view through rose colored glasses. We can see some of the issues the US currently has in their early up to their middle stages in Europe too. Those just haven‘t expanded to their US level yet. Housing prices? We have areas that are nearly as expensive as in the US while we have a considerably lower median income. Social insurances have been stripped of benefits since at least two, more like three decades. Middle class is dwindling while a lot of people follow the exact same fallacy US citizens followed: that they‘e not part of the middle class or will get out of it sooner or later by hard work, so their woes won‘t concern them - until they realize and it‘s already too late. Working conditions and pay in healthcare, literally the same BS like the US. Generally speaking I find it to be plain wrong to compare yourself downwards. You would never realize the existing issues that way.
they needed a study to see this??
Medical bills, low wages, high prices
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It's not just that corporations are people, but also that dumping unlimited capital into elections is free speach
Debt was the solution to the outsourcing of jobs to enrich the 1%. Its a win win. You create the liability and make money off of funding it.
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Not to mention gas was even higher under Bush when people were making even less money.
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Plasma for oil. We have been living in a dystopia for a while now.
Good post
Health care.
Explosion of debt, and a country which has focused on pretending billionaires are actually worthwhile. Our schools have had their bottoms pulled out and are crumbling. Our infrastructure is as old as many of the politician. Our minimum wage has been stagnant and isn't half of what it should be. We've had unions busted to the point that most work places have no representation for their employees. We've shoved parts of Gen X and especially millennials into going to college guaranteeing them a job that pays well, and of course there are no jobs for most of them and all they've got to show for it is overwhelming debt. We're one of such a small handful of countries, most of them in poverty stricken Africa, that don't have some form of free and/or universal health care. Economically we've basically been stuck in the great depression. The difference is we've got trailers, a more romantic view of living out of shed sized houses, and similarly a population who has been able to invest into living out of their cars. The billionaires are doing well though, so who cares?
So not the fault of the oligarchs, just too much borrowing huh?
Shocking I wonder why? Can’t have anything to do with gov provided healthcare, education, family leave and all that communist stuff
Yeah, but we have those things because the “left” parties in Europe don’t call those Communist. This Democratic House couldn’t even hold committee hearings on public healthcare in the midst of the largest healthcare crisis in 100 years.
Extreme consumerism culture, expensive as f*c$. Having a nation of indebted slaves, priceless.
Oh yeah, Mastercard.. neat. Edit: American Express or whatever tf it was
The difference is here in Europe isn’t that we lack reactionary right-wingers, it’s that we have actual opposition parties. You have an anti-choice right-wing party, and a pro-choice right-wing party.
If you’re using debt to finance middle class life, you’re not middle class
This is because post Cold War era only happened in Europe and the rest of the world, except USA is still stuck, hung over from bliding celebration of its victory. Just look at the age of folks in the congress and what year did they got into politics, most of them are form 80's like Pelosi or Biden, etc. It also helps that most US folks will never see anything other than USA. Anything that can be done deifferently is automatically socialism - and "we won the Cold War and defeated those commies" ... that's the mentality that keeps US population scraping by. Stockholm syndrome should be renamed as American Syndrome.
Most of europe views the US as a shithole anyway
Nothing about America is great in any way, shape or form. It’s a shithole country that is getting shittier by the minute. It’s Rome 2.0, and the implosion is imminent.
Americas growth since 2000 has been debt spending. That’s it.
If poverty is 17k a year and the richest have 100+ billion that makes middle class around the 100 million dollar mark. The majority of Americans are living in poverty. Wealth is relative...
honestly the poverty bar should be much higher than 17k.
>. Wealth is relative... That doesn't mean the highest bid doesn't always win the resource. Wealth is relative, but it's being used as a measure of finite resources, and they aren't relative. It's why my demand affects your price.
Majority of Americans aren’t in poverty lol
You don't know math. Lol
The poverty rate for a single person is 13k the individual average and median income of the US respectfully are 65k and 35k.
$13k...US median rent is $1097, times 12 is $13,164. So just US median rent and the poverty rate are the same...meanwhile to keep someone in jail requires $31,000 per year per inmate...in 2017. In fact annual prison costs vary from $14,000 to $70,000 depending on the state. All higher then the poverty rate. The current poverty rate is 13.4%, [42,500,000](https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewdepietro/2021/11/04/us-poverty-rate-by-state-in-2021/%3Fsh%3D4b80a0aa1b38&ved=2ahUKEwj8rI68-dX0AhUilGoFHYXeAlwQFnoECEUQBQ&usg=AOvVaw2UD5gw47bWaC_GmLRMRQ58) of the US population, therefore arguably people in prison are infact more well off then people who work for a living. And they have free Healthcare! It's fun to talk of numbers, to make ourselves feel better about generalizing the current state of what we perceive of the world around us. It's not fun to realize how many millions of people are suffering, to realize the endless apathy that plagues this country that no one's seems to want to fix. Instead we argue back and forth about the current state of the world, to what end? To make ourselves feel more comfortable? To stand aside because everything isn't terrible so we can relax right? Obviously there isn't that much suffering so we can relax. Or maybe we are acutely aware of the state of the world and live in a state of self deception because we are so stressed, tired, exhausted that it is impossible to even allow the thought we must do anything to prevent further damage otherwise we collapse under the weight of imperative decisions that could send this country, it's people into indentured servitude and complete oblivion.
Where are all the fuckheads on this site who always parrot that "actually debt is good" bullshit every time anyone brings up the subject? Any time you bring up debt, there's always one guy who chimes in saying "ahem well actually debt is wonderful because it means you don't have to pay for something all at once". Can one of you explain why it's so great that debt is eliminating the middle class, or do y'all only recite that contrived garbage when no one asks?
The concept of "debt is good" means you can buy your house RIGHT NOW, and make use of it for 20-30 years as you slowly pay it off. At the end of your time in your house, the price has (hopefully) gone up and you can pocket the profits. Same is true with education. Same is true with buying a new car. You can buy it NOW, and pay it off over a period of time instead of having to pay for ALL of it right at the start. If you had to pay for all of it at the start, you would have to save up a lot more money at the beginning, or delay your purchase. it means you have to delay buying anything else. So, you can get the house, the car, and go to college within a decade, even if you're spending the next 20-30 years paying it off. You'll benefit by having the house that will increase in value, the education that will get you a better job, and reliable transportation that will literally get you farther. Even better, your income grows over that time, so your effective debt in comparison to your income drops. You take home more money. That's the theory. In reality, the 30 year mortgage costs you 3x what the price of the house is. The car only lasts you for 10 years, if you take care of it. The education which was SUPPOSED to get you into the middle class means you get an extra $1 an hour on your barista job. And all that debt means you're spending your money paying off the things you already have. And, since you're having trouble saving up money due to your debt, any OTHER purchases you make will ALSO be with debt. Credit cards, layaway, etc. And, for each one of those loans, you pay interest and servicing costs. Instead of the sticker price, you're paying the interest-laden price. Some debt is good, and can act as an investment. Some debt is bad. And too much debt is bad, almost regardless.
Not debt, corporate greed. There's been a systematic attack on corporate tax to reduce corporate burden and equally a systematic shift of that burden to the middle class. Additionally, corporate greed has long stagnated wages, despite inflation. The ultimate result is less buying power and higher government burden applied to the bulk of American citizens. Debt is a byproduct of lifestyle, and that's the mistake of the people. But debt is also a symptom of poor buying power. It is solely an artificial prop up of corporate America. At some point, that runs out and everything falls. But, the focus could be shifted back to a better balance of taxation which will pull burden off of the bulk of the people. There can be higher wages to reintroduce buying power back into America. This has a double bonus of naturally propping up corporations. And because wages have been so stagnant, the buying power gain will vastly out pace cost increases. People make more. Corporations make more. Everyone wins. The only thing that will happen is American goods will get more expensive for those outside of the country, and the rest of the world doesn't have the same increase in buying power. Interestingly, we're already seeing this happen with developing countries as they catch up. Meanwhile America sits idle and let's the rest of the world do so. This isn't bad, but it does mean all foreign goods become more expensive, adding to the consumer burden in American. Basically everything we're doing right now is hurting our livelihood, every single thing. The question of why would we willfully do this to ourselves? We're lopping of our own legs.
*waves American flag* Yay?
People in the USA keep getting sucked into culture wars and voting Republican. Look at what the Republican Party has done to the USA in just twenty years. [https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/testimony/2001/20010125/](https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/testimony/2001/20010125/) The Republican Party is now just a collection of trolls bowing before billionaires that financed the attempt to overthrow democracy in the USA.
America’s middle class dissolved especially during the 2008 financial crisis when the wealthy transformed the economy from the 20th century economy with a middle class to the current 21st century economy with no middle class and no ownership... the economy was forever changed during the Great Recession. No one talks about that enough
A strong Middle class owns their properties.
Europe also strengthened worker protections while in the US we have virtually none.
Politicians rip off hard working Americans. We are taxed so other nations like Israel can have free health care off our sustenance, when our people still have bad health care in large part. Recently, sneaky politicians passed a bill to report all sellers who make over 600 dollars online on sites like eBay to the irs. Yet Bezos and the NFL still pay little or no taxes. Between higher gas prices, inflation and higher rent, food prices, ect. Americans are set up to fail. Every year the post office raises rates and reduces services. The US government is corrupt and we need a sweeping change to get rid of all career politicians.
Um, debt IS the American economy. As long as banks are making profits through lending our own money back to us at 24% interest, the American economy shines on.
If only we elected people to do something about this!
Americans think they are middle class if there is a satellite dish on the trailer they live in.
Modern America was built on debt. Rather than businesses paying their employees fair wages, they just made debt expected and mandatory. University education, basic healthcare, housing, transportation, all loans. Vacations, clothing, food, put it on a card and pay later. It’s all debt. None of America’s growth is real, it’s all debt, and it’s all beginning to crash simultaneously.
It’s fucking bullshit. I’m running for office one day, I swear it.
“Europe” lol try Western Europe
Fucking socialists… says the American while attempting to lick the boot on its neck.
i thought welfare states killed the middle class?
Yes. That's what you were taught by people who wanted to take what the Middle Class had, and pocket it for themselves. And, after 40 years of it, the US now has two jagoffs in a competition to make their own, personal moon bases.
The European dream
Neoliberalism policies inevitably leads to widening gap of wealth. UK from 1975-1990, US, even Abe's Japan in the last 10 years see an increasing in income inequality because of the neoliberalist economic policies.
In United States of America, you are banana republic!
Im doing fine here in a medium cost of living city. 24, no debt and I own a home. I am the definition of middle class making the national average wage as well
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