4 ms·

"figure out why people vote the way they do" Because they are being conned to believe it is not the bankers or the corporates or those who's coatpockets are br

"figure out why people vote the way they do" Because they are being conned to believe it is not the bankers or the corporates or those who's coatpockets are brimming with money that took their share of the wealth, it is the dirtpoor immigrants.

rayiner 7y ago
Ah yes. Americans are just dumb and easily duped. (Meanwhile, rich people and “corporates” are unable to dupe people in Europe, because reasons.) It has nothing to do with the fact that they live in houses twice as big as those in France, can drive around large SUVs, and have $15,000+ more per year in disposable income at the median than the French. Nothing to do with that at all.
- gameswithgo 7y ago
  > It has nothing to do with the fact that they live in houses twice as big as those in France, can drive around large SUVs, and have $15,000+ more per year in disposable income at the median than the French pretty sure we spend that extra money on our worse health outcomes and SUVs are terrible to drive.
  - roenxi 7y ago
    Is it so crazy to believe there are ways to make healthcare better through the free market? US Healthcare as it stands is a non-free market run by private entities. It isn't immediately obvious that a non-free market run by the government is the way to go. It might be possible to get the best of both worlds by going to a free market run by private entities. The potential to have low costs and the economic edge from low taxes is surely quite enticing.
    - drjesusphd 7y ago
      > Is it so crazy to believe there are ways to make healthcare better through the free market? Yes, it is. Any market you're forced to participate in, lest you die, is not and cannot ever be a "free market".
      - whateversclever 7y ago
        I think grocery stores are evidence to the contrary
        danaris 7y ago
        OK, so the wording needs to be adjusted slightly. Any market in which you, at the moment you need its goods or services, cannot reasonably be expected to evaluate multiple options, due to the urgency of the need, cannot be considered free. Yes, obviously, we all need food, but I have some in my refrigerator now, and I ate breakfast this morning, so I have some time to decide whether to go to Price Chopper, Wegman's, or Hannaford to buy my next week's meals. Even in the most urgent circumstance (someone who is literally starving right now), the choice of which grocery store to go to to purchase the food that will save their life is a fairly small decision: most will have something that can serve that need for a vaguely reasonable price, and then that decision will be done, and they'll have the time to consider, "But do I want to go to that one for my next food purchase, or is one that's farther away a better option?" Healthcare can sometimes be like that. We have some freedom to shop around and choose where to get elective surgeries, ongoing maintenance/preventative care, etc. But if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, even assuming I were conscious and coherent enough to make such a choice, I wouldn't be in a position to say, "No, I don't want to go to the closest hospital; I want to go to the one three counties over, because their trauma ward is better." If I waited that long, I'd die. Furthermore, the vast majority of Americans don't have any meaningful choice in their health insurance provider. They get it through their employer, paying out of pocket would be prohibitively expensive, and the employer isn't just going to give you what they'd be paying for your plan so you can buy another. For those who have to pay out of pocket, there still aren't great options, because the vast majority of insurance plans that are remotely within reach of people who don't have the absurd luck to get six-to-seven-figure Silicon Valley-style salaries are high-deductible plans, meaning you're still going to be paying thousands upon thousands of dollars out of pocket for care if anything happens. And then there's the issues with figuring out what's in-network and what's not... Put simply, the healthcare "market" in America is not merely un-free because it is fundamentally coercive, it is also deliberately obfuscatory in terms of what you get for your money, and even how much you'll have to pay in many cases—and remember, a free market absolutely relies on full information.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    Your average voter does not spend that extra money on either insurance premiums or "worse health outcomes." 2/3 of people who aren't on Medicare have employer-provided health insurance. For those people, employers pay 82% of premiums, leaving employees to pay about $1,250 per year for individuals, and about $5,600 per year for families: https://www.peoplekeep.com/blog/what-percent-of-health-insurance-is-paid-by-employers https://www.peoplekeep.com/blog/what-percent-of-health-insur.... Note that the median household income for a married couple with kids under 18 is $95,000 in the US: https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/terence-p-jeffrey/number-married-couples-kids-hit-56-year-low https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/terence-p-jeffrey/number-.... As to worse health outcomes: Minnesota has a life expectancy comparable to Sweden. Asian Americans in the United States have a life expectancy longer than Asians in Japan, Hong Kong, or Singapore. Looking at the averages skews the fact that much of our disparities in outcomes is not across the board, but the result of disenfranchised minority groups having much worse outcomes than the majority of the population. But your average voter skews more white, older, suburban, married, wealthier, etc., than the general population. The health outcomes for these people are not appreciably, if at all, worse than in Europe. What you're chalking up as some conspiracy by "the rich" against "everyone else" is better understood as white middle class voters voting for policies that benefit themselves at the expense of disenfranchised minorities. It's not the "rich people" and "corporates" (which Europe has too!) but rather the majority's treatment of the disenfranchised minority (which comprises a much larger fraction of the U.S. population than in most European countries). (In that sense, I'd say that the extreme left wing has a better argument than the moderate left wing. In a world where white Minnesotans have similar health outcomes to white Swedes, while predominantly African American Mississippians live the better part of a decade less, race is a much more important issue than economic policy. And you can't blame the "corporates" for that.)
    - tptacek 7y ago
      I wonder to what extent those average numbers for American out-of-pocket costs are skewed towards the overall majority health outcome (no serious, expensive chronic illness until around Medicare age), and whether the American health situation is drastically worse if you are sick, and Americans just don't price that possibility in.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    > pretty sure we spend that extra money on our worse health outcomes and SUVs are terrible to drive. The health outcomes in the US are better than the EU for people who have health insurance. The mean outcomes are worse in the US because of people without health insurance significantly bringing down the average, but people in the US who do have private insurance are not wrong to want to preserve their own (higher) quality of care while finding a better solution for those currently uninsured. (There are also some other factors like lower population density increasing emergency response times, so the outcomes in rural areas are worse and the US is more rural, which would obviously not be remedied by single payer.) And "SUVs are terrible to drive" is trivially empirically testable -- if both SUVs and smaller vehicles are available and people willingly choose SUVs anyway, we know what they prefer. If you want to argue against SUVs then make the environmental argument about externalities that might actually hold water, not "SUVs are terrible to drive" which is a subjective opinion that millions of people evidently disagree with.
- ryandrake 7y ago
  At least in the USA, public support for any given policy is usually a function of how much money is poured into promoting it. It's no surprise that policies that benefit the rich, get promoted by the rich, and consequently end up with sufficient public support. I have no idea how it works in France, but if I were a rich person trying to find the country with the best ROI for my influence-dollars, it would be a large powerful country rather than a small one, and one where the law is set up specifically to encourage unlimited financial contributions to political causes. What you pointed out in your initial comment is totally true, though. The "current powers" have nothing to do with what side of the political fence they're on. There are rich people on both sides and they tend to support and fund things that keep them rich. And that's what we end up with as policy, regardless of what letter is next to lawmakers' names. The red-vs-blue distinction is manufactured tribalism and doesn't really have much of an effect on who public policy actually ends up benefiting.
- FussyZeus 7y ago
  > Ah yes. Americans are just dumb and easily duped. I wouldn't say dumb or easily, but a large portion of us I would agree are being duped. I mean you have entire swaths of the country that believe "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" is actually serious advice, and not the sarcastic and ridiculous statement it was originally coined as. The streak of individualism present in most places but especially in the States has been hijacked to great effect to make people more willing to vote against their better interests in the name of what's sold to them as "freedom."
- MaysonL 7y ago
  Balanced by TGV and the fact that infant mortality rates don't depend upon which zip code (or arrondissement) you live in.
- PeterStuer 7y ago
  Why do you think my comment was aimed at Americans? The EU has the exact same situation.
mieseratte 7y ago
> Because they are being conned to believe it is not the bankers or the corporates or those who's coatpockets are brimming with money that took their share of the wealth, it is the dirtpoor immigrants. Perhaps they're both problematic! If all you have to add is "my opposition is stupid and uninformed" perhaps you should refrain from commenting.
- PeterStuer 7y ago
  Immigration is a complex issue and can be problematic in many ways. But blaming the poorest of the immigrants for taking away the share of the wealth of the bottom 80% of the lopsided Pareto distribution is disingenuous.

rayiner 7y ago

Ah yes. Americans are just dumb and easily duped. (Meanwhile, rich people and “corporates” are unable to dupe people in Europe, because reasons.) It has nothing to do with the fact that they live in houses twice as big as those in France, can drive around large SUVs, and have $15,000+ more per year in disposable income at the median than the French. Nothing to do with that at all.

gameswithgo 7y ago
> It has nothing to do with the fact that they live in houses twice as big as those in France, can drive around large SUVs, and have $15,000+ more per year in disposable income at the median than the French pretty sure we spend that extra money on our worse health outcomes and SUVs are terrible to drive.
- roenxi 7y ago
  Is it so crazy to believe there are ways to make healthcare better through the free market? US Healthcare as it stands is a non-free market run by private entities. It isn't immediately obvious that a non-free market run by the government is the way to go. It might be possible to get the best of both worlds by going to a free market run by private entities. The potential to have low costs and the economic edge from low taxes is surely quite enticing.
  - drjesusphd 7y ago
    > Is it so crazy to believe there are ways to make healthcare better through the free market? Yes, it is. Any market you're forced to participate in, lest you die, is not and cannot ever be a "free market".
    - whateversclever 7y ago
      I think grocery stores are evidence to the contrary
      - danaris 7y ago
        OK, so the wording needs to be adjusted slightly. Any market in which you, at the moment you need its goods or services, cannot reasonably be expected to evaluate multiple options, due to the urgency of the need, cannot be considered free. Yes, obviously, we all need food, but I have some in my refrigerator now, and I ate breakfast this morning, so I have some time to decide whether to go to Price Chopper, Wegman's, or Hannaford to buy my next week's meals. Even in the most urgent circumstance (someone who is literally starving right now), the choice of which grocery store to go to to purchase the food that will save their life is a fairly small decision: most will have something that can serve that need for a vaguely reasonable price, and then that decision will be done, and they'll have the time to consider, "But do I want to go to that one for my next food purchase, or is one that's farther away a better option?" Healthcare can sometimes be like that. We have some freedom to shop around and choose where to get elective surgeries, ongoing maintenance/preventative care, etc. But if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, even assuming I were conscious and coherent enough to make such a choice, I wouldn't be in a position to say, "No, I don't want to go to the closest hospital; I want to go to the one three counties over, because their trauma ward is better." If I waited that long, I'd die. Furthermore, the vast majority of Americans don't have any meaningful choice in their health insurance provider. They get it through their employer, paying out of pocket would be prohibitively expensive, and the employer isn't just going to give you what they'd be paying for your plan so you can buy another. For those who have to pay out of pocket, there still aren't great options, because the vast majority of insurance plans that are remotely within reach of people who don't have the absurd luck to get six-to-seven-figure Silicon Valley-style salaries are high-deductible plans, meaning you're still going to be paying thousands upon thousands of dollars out of pocket for care if anything happens. And then there's the issues with figuring out what's in-network and what's not... Put simply, the healthcare "market" in America is not merely un-free because it is fundamentally coercive, it is also deliberately obfuscatory in terms of what you get for your money, and even how much you'll have to pay in many cases—and remember, a free market absolutely relies on full information.
- rayiner 7y ago
  Your average voter does not spend that extra money on either insurance premiums or "worse health outcomes." 2/3 of people who aren't on Medicare have employer-provided health insurance. For those people, employers pay 82% of premiums, leaving employees to pay about $1,250 per year for individuals, and about $5,600 per year for families: https://www.peoplekeep.com/blog/what-percent-of-health-insurance-is-paid-by-employers https://www.peoplekeep.com/blog/what-percent-of-health-insur.... Note that the median household income for a married couple with kids under 18 is $95,000 in the US: https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/terence-p-jeffrey/number-married-couples-kids-hit-56-year-low https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/terence-p-jeffrey/number-.... As to worse health outcomes: Minnesota has a life expectancy comparable to Sweden. Asian Americans in the United States have a life expectancy longer than Asians in Japan, Hong Kong, or Singapore. Looking at the averages skews the fact that much of our disparities in outcomes is not across the board, but the result of disenfranchised minority groups having much worse outcomes than the majority of the population. But your average voter skews more white, older, suburban, married, wealthier, etc., than the general population. The health outcomes for these people are not appreciably, if at all, worse than in Europe. What you're chalking up as some conspiracy by "the rich" against "everyone else" is better understood as white middle class voters voting for policies that benefit themselves at the expense of disenfranchised minorities. It's not the "rich people" and "corporates" (which Europe has too!) but rather the majority's treatment of the disenfranchised minority (which comprises a much larger fraction of the U.S. population than in most European countries). (In that sense, I'd say that the extreme left wing has a better argument than the moderate left wing. In a world where white Minnesotans have similar health outcomes to white Swedes, while predominantly African American Mississippians live the better part of a decade less, race is a much more important issue than economic policy. And you can't blame the "corporates" for that.)
  - tptacek 7y ago
    I wonder to what extent those average numbers for American out-of-pocket costs are skewed towards the overall majority health outcome (no serious, expensive chronic illness until around Medicare age), and whether the American health situation is drastically worse if you are sick, and Americans just don't price that possibility in.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  > pretty sure we spend that extra money on our worse health outcomes and SUVs are terrible to drive. The health outcomes in the US are better than the EU for people who have health insurance. The mean outcomes are worse in the US because of people without health insurance significantly bringing down the average, but people in the US who do have private insurance are not wrong to want to preserve their own (higher) quality of care while finding a better solution for those currently uninsured. (There are also some other factors like lower population density increasing emergency response times, so the outcomes in rural areas are worse and the US is more rural, which would obviously not be remedied by single payer.) And "SUVs are terrible to drive" is trivially empirically testable -- if both SUVs and smaller vehicles are available and people willingly choose SUVs anyway, we know what they prefer. If you want to argue against SUVs then make the environmental argument about externalities that might actually hold water, not "SUVs are terrible to drive" which is a subjective opinion that millions of people evidently disagree with.
ryandrake 7y ago
At least in the USA, public support for any given policy is usually a function of how much money is poured into promoting it. It's no surprise that policies that benefit the rich, get promoted by the rich, and consequently end up with sufficient public support. I have no idea how it works in France, but if I were a rich person trying to find the country with the best ROI for my influence-dollars, it would be a large powerful country rather than a small one, and one where the law is set up specifically to encourage unlimited financial contributions to political causes. What you pointed out in your initial comment is totally true, though. The "current powers" have nothing to do with what side of the political fence they're on. There are rich people on both sides and they tend to support and fund things that keep them rich. And that's what we end up with as policy, regardless of what letter is next to lawmakers' names. The red-vs-blue distinction is manufactured tribalism and doesn't really have much of an effect on who public policy actually ends up benefiting.
FussyZeus 7y ago
> Ah yes. Americans are just dumb and easily duped. I wouldn't say dumb or easily, but a large portion of us I would agree are being duped. I mean you have entire swaths of the country that believe "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" is actually serious advice, and not the sarcastic and ridiculous statement it was originally coined as. The streak of individualism present in most places but especially in the States has been hijacked to great effect to make people more willing to vote against their better interests in the name of what's sold to them as "freedom."
MaysonL 7y ago
Balanced by TGV and the fact that infant mortality rates don't depend upon which zip code (or arrondissement) you live in.
PeterStuer 7y ago
Why do you think my comment was aimed at Americans? The EU has the exact same situation.

mieseratte 7y ago

> Because they are being conned to believe it is not the bankers or the corporates or those who's coatpockets are brimming with money that took their share of the wealth, it is the dirtpoor immigrants. Perhaps they're both problematic! If all you have to add is "my opposition is stupid and uninformed" perhaps you should refrain from commenting.

PeterStuer 7y ago
Immigration is a complex issue and can be problematic in many ways. But blaming the poorest of the immigrants for taking away the share of the wealth of the bottom 80% of the lopsided Pareto distribution is disingenuous.