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Most of the EU has some form of universal health care. So does the UK, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Singapore. Those aren't poor countries.
by hbrav 5y ago
Most of the EU has some form of universal health care. So does the UK, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Singapore. Those aren't poor countries.
- wyager 5y agoEU countries except the ones I mentioned (with unusual revenue source) are generally much poorer than the US. So are Canada, Japan, South Korea. Even Singapore is slightly poorer per capita than US, and it has a lot of advantages. You can say “they’re not poor countries” - this is a meaningless subjective threshold. They are (sometimes a lot) poorer than the US. Look at every single country richer than the US - they all have some unusual revenue source (oil, tax refuge, financial services, etc.) (and most of that money comes from the US)
- hbrav 5y agoHaving lived in the UK and in Canada, I am very comfortable saying that: "they're not poor countries". We can discuss where the threshold is, but if you seriously want to class the UK or Canada as "poor" countries, you're quite disconnected from reality. If you want some more concrete figures, there's a median income table on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income The US has a significantly higher median income than some countries on my list, but not by the 2-5x I saw you claiming on another comment. I'll note that there are also some that are very close to the US and do not have an unusual revenue source: Canada, Austria, Australia and Sweden.
- wyager 5y ago> We can discuss where the threshold is, It doesn't matter what arbitrary threshold we pick. Relative to the USA, they are poor. Having half as much productivity per person is relative poverty. I'm not willing to give up half my income (probably actually more for me, given the industry I work in) for some relatively minor putative social benefits like explicitly nationalizing health insurance. > not by the 2-5x I was talking about dev salaries, not median income (although median income is also quite different). > Canada, Austria, Australia and Sweden. GDPPC: Canada: USA 38% higher Austria: USA 28% higher Australia: USA 10% higher Sweden: USA 15% higher I'll admit that AUS and SWE are reasonably close. Canada is quite a lot poorer...
- bobsmooth 5y agoHow much of your salary do you spend on health insurance?
- wyager 5y agoImpossible to tell because it’s paid for by my employer (as with most Americans), who has a bulk contract with the insurance provider, so there’s not an easy number that you can say “I paid”. Obviously it costs me something on expectation, and I would guess that it’s probably on the order of low single digit percent. I wouldn’t be surprised if I pay more in Medicare taxes (funding medical for old people, split between me and my employer) than I do for my own insurance.
- hbrav 5y agoCanada has a median income that is only 6% lower than the US. Describing it as "quite a lot poorer" is plainly nonsense. GDPPC is a mean, and can be skewed by a smaller percentage of the population earning an very high salary. (The fact that the US has a higher Gini index (41.4% vs 33.3% for Canada) suggests that this is what's going on.) It does not tell you how "poor" or otherwise a typical inhabitant of the country is.