7 ms·

It's literal vulture capitalism: not just content to extract value by liquidating the needs of society, but to extract from dying people. Also, illness in the

It's literal vulture capitalism: not just content to extract value by liquidating the needs of society, but to extract from dying people. Also, illness in the US is still the number 1 cause of bankruptcy. Only America thinks so little of people that they threaten the dying with destitution and homelessness.

recursivedoubts 3y ago
> Only America thinks so little of people that they threaten the dying with destitution and homelessness. Americans are, for the most part, a kindly and trusting people, happy to help out complete strangers. America is a shit show run by sociopaths. It is important to disambiguate these two things.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  Or rather, admittedly from an European POV, Americans seem to be kindly, trusting and helpful towards members of their own sub-group, and quite the contrary to those they deem "lesser" in status - the poor, the disabled, people of color. That makes it all the easier for rich vultures to pit Americans against one another - to the tune of it being the subject of a very valid joke: > A banker, a worker, and an immigrant are sitting at a table with 20 cookies. The banker takes 19 cookies and warns the worker: "Watch out, the immigrant is going to take your cookie away."
  - rippercushions 3y ago
    > Americans seem to be kindly, trusting and helpful towards members of their own sub-group, and quite the contrary to those they deem "lesser" in status - the poor, the disabled, people of color. As a European, I can assure you we share these traits. Try asking one how they feel about local Romani, African or Syrian refugees, foreign beggars, etc.
    - bushbaba 3y ago
      Or about inherited wealth. America at least has better social mobility, for now.
      - notacoward 3y ago
        Absolutely not. The US doesn't even make the top 20. https://www.weforum.org/reports/global-social-mobility-index-2020-why-economies-benefit-from-fixing-inequality/ https://www.weforum.org/reports/global-social-mobility-index... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_...
      - mistrial9 3y ago
        its a common misconception, since that was sold to the public for the last 100+ years.. but not, actually, the demographics in recent decades show less social mobility overall, as compared to other developed nations in the same time periods.. source: Pew research reports and other
      - FranzFerdiNaN 3y ago
        Social mobility requires a society that allows you to fail but stil pick you up afterwards. America doesn’t.
        Sankozi 3y ago
        No, social mobility does not need that. And no, America has some (imperfect, but quite wide) social safety net. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_safety_net https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_safety_net
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
    > and quite the contrary to those they deem "lesser" in status - the poor, the disabled, people of color. At least it is better than Europe which spent the first few decades of the 1900s exterminating them by the millions. Even now, Europe won’t allow foreigners to assimilate. Name any major EU company led by a non-white person. Even today at football games all over Europe, non-white players are openly subjected to horrific racial abuse by the crowds. Europe is still horribly racist towards any outsiders. Yet, living in their ethnically homogeneous countries they cast stones at the USA which has actually assimilated and welcomed people from all over the world.
    - skinnymuch 3y ago
      It’s wild seeing US centric and Euro centric povs. How do both sides not see the problem with the Global North as a whole. The lack of self awareness between the Great Powers is interesting.
    - Aeolun 3y ago
      > ethnically homogeneous countries Wut? Europe is anything but ethnically homogenous. The US is anything but welcoming now. It might have been in the past.
      - RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
        > Wut? Europe is anything but ethnically homogenous. You are right. I forgot how diverse countries like Belgium are where Flemish, French, and German communities (whose ancestors all likely were born within a few hundred miles of each other) all live together in peace and harmony (other than when they try to form a government)
        Aeolun 3y ago
        I think you have a slightly different impression of Europeans than me. We mildly dislike all the other nationalities (except the French, everyone hates the French), but we have a few thousand years of history fighting each other and it just doesn’t seem worth the effort any more. All of that falls to nothing compared to the dislike some people have for the European version of the Mexicans stealing our jobs (hence, far right populism in Europe rising sharply right now) Never mind that none of the ethic Europeans wants to do those jobs in the first place. I’m sure we’ll figure it out in 100 years or so. When everyone will be some variety of brown/yellow/pink.
  - cameldrv 3y ago
    In my experience it is the opposite. Americans give about 3x as much per capita to charity as Germans, for example. In continental Europe generally you will also see strong anti-immigrant and anti-minority sentiments expressed in casual, middle class society that I haven’t seen to anywhere near the same degree in the U.S.
    - forgetfreeman 3y ago
      The real pisser: the overwhelming majority of those "charities" are either fundamentalist religious organizations with deeply troubling agendas or thinly camouflaged tax shelters for the obscenely wealthy. Ain't that a kick in the head?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - rfrey 3y ago
      A huge fraction of that charity is donations to the church one is a member of, much of which money goes to church salaries, property maintenance, etc. If we included country club dues and gym memberships in the German charity numbers, perhaps the "charitable giving" numbers would be closer.
      - cameldrv 3y ago
        Donations to religious organizations were about 28% of donations in the U.S. If you excluded all of the charitable donations to churches, the U.S. numbers would still be more than twice as much as Germany. Also, while a large part of the religious donations go to the operation of the church, churches do a lot of other charitable activities such as food pantries, shelters, disaster relief, education, etc. Having lived in both places, charity is simply much more of a part of the culture in the U.S. I think the general feeling in Germany was that taking care of people in trouble was the job of the government and that they paid their taxes and that doing more was not necessary.
        3y ago
  - pyuser583 3y ago
    That’s funny, when we look at Europeans we see the same thing. Europeans freak out at levels of immigration that are normal in the US.
    - dukeyukey 3y ago
      To be fair lots of European countries have immigration levels comparable to or greater than the US, although a sizeable amount of those immigrants are other Europeans. And it's not like the US "build the wall" isn't also having a moment.
  - fyloraspit 3y ago
    If we are being real, isn't the banker probably from Europe though?
- michaelmrose 3y ago
  Americans are on average selfish, vulgar, greedy, indifferent to injustice, indifferent to suffering, and racist. We like to say shit on social media and occasionally throw a tiny minority of our money and none of our time at the most visible problems resulting in parasites specializing in appearing to do useful things while mostly paying people with degrees to think about helping people. This is why we have people dying for lack of medicine, starving kids, and stories of that random teacher whose humiliation made the rounds on social media who people raised 80k for that one time in place of systemic solutions. America is run by the kind of folks the disreputable folks discussed above would vote for.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 3y ago
    [flagged]
emodendroket 3y ago
As a counterpoint, though, is the very idea of running a business providing end-of-life care evil? It’s not like there’s a government program you can use.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- missedthecue 3y ago
  The traditional providers of end-of-life care for most of history were called your own children. This has changed over the last 75 years or so and now people are upset that the cost of providing messy, high stress, praiseless, 24/7 work costs a lot of money.
  - emodendroket 3y ago
    Yeah and failing that you were just destitute. Let's not act like that always worked out so great or is a serious solution for today's problems.
    - missedthecue 3y ago
      It's not the solution necessarily but income equals expenditure. They're one and the same. People need to stop pretending that the true cost of hospice care is much cheaper than what's charged today. Look at what non-profits charge. It's still eye watering sums, and not much different than investor owned hospice care quotes. Your greatest hint into the fact that end of life care genuinely costs a lot is that LTC insurers keep going bankrupt. Insurance companies don't like going bankrupt.
  - jjeaff 3y ago
    It doesn't cost nearly as much as they charge though. Otherwise, private equity wouldn't be getting involved.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
fithisux 3y ago
Capitalism is always vulture capitalism.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  Life was so much better in the Soviet Union that they had to build a wall around it and shoot people who tried to escape to capitalism.
  - FranzFerdiNaN 3y ago
    There are clearly only two options: capitalism or dictatorship. Nothing else is possible. American capitalism is given by God and the best of all possible worlds. Yes sir.

recursivedoubts 3y ago

> Only America thinks so little of people that they threaten the dying with destitution and homelessness. Americans are, for the most part, a kindly and trusting people, happy to help out complete strangers. America is a shit show run by sociopaths. It is important to disambiguate these two things.

mschuster91 3y ago
Or rather, admittedly from an European POV, Americans seem to be kindly, trusting and helpful towards members of their own sub-group, and quite the contrary to those they deem "lesser" in status - the poor, the disabled, people of color. That makes it all the easier for rich vultures to pit Americans against one another - to the tune of it being the subject of a very valid joke: > A banker, a worker, and an immigrant are sitting at a table with 20 cookies. The banker takes 19 cookies and warns the worker: "Watch out, the immigrant is going to take your cookie away."
- rippercushions 3y ago
  > Americans seem to be kindly, trusting and helpful towards members of their own sub-group, and quite the contrary to those they deem "lesser" in status - the poor, the disabled, people of color. As a European, I can assure you we share these traits. Try asking one how they feel about local Romani, African or Syrian refugees, foreign beggars, etc.
  - bushbaba 3y ago
    Or about inherited wealth. America at least has better social mobility, for now.
    - notacoward 3y ago
      Absolutely not. The US doesn't even make the top 20. https://www.weforum.org/reports/global-social-mobility-index-2020-why-economies-benefit-from-fixing-inequality/ https://www.weforum.org/reports/global-social-mobility-index... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_...
    - mistrial9 3y ago
      its a common misconception, since that was sold to the public for the last 100+ years.. but not, actually, the demographics in recent decades show less social mobility overall, as compared to other developed nations in the same time periods.. source: Pew research reports and other
    - FranzFerdiNaN 3y ago
      Social mobility requires a society that allows you to fail but stil pick you up afterwards. America doesn’t.
      - Sankozi 3y ago
        No, social mobility does not need that. And no, America has some (imperfect, but quite wide) social safety net. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_safety_net https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_safety_net
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
  > and quite the contrary to those they deem "lesser" in status - the poor, the disabled, people of color. At least it is better than Europe which spent the first few decades of the 1900s exterminating them by the millions. Even now, Europe won’t allow foreigners to assimilate. Name any major EU company led by a non-white person. Even today at football games all over Europe, non-white players are openly subjected to horrific racial abuse by the crowds. Europe is still horribly racist towards any outsiders. Yet, living in their ethnically homogeneous countries they cast stones at the USA which has actually assimilated and welcomed people from all over the world.
  - skinnymuch 3y ago
    It’s wild seeing US centric and Euro centric povs. How do both sides not see the problem with the Global North as a whole. The lack of self awareness between the Great Powers is interesting.
  - Aeolun 3y ago
    > ethnically homogeneous countries Wut? Europe is anything but ethnically homogenous. The US is anything but welcoming now. It might have been in the past.
    - RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
      > Wut? Europe is anything but ethnically homogenous. You are right. I forgot how diverse countries like Belgium are where Flemish, French, and German communities (whose ancestors all likely were born within a few hundred miles of each other) all live together in peace and harmony (other than when they try to form a government)
      - Aeolun 3y ago
        I think you have a slightly different impression of Europeans than me. We mildly dislike all the other nationalities (except the French, everyone hates the French), but we have a few thousand years of history fighting each other and it just doesn’t seem worth the effort any more. All of that falls to nothing compared to the dislike some people have for the European version of the Mexicans stealing our jobs (hence, far right populism in Europe rising sharply right now) Never mind that none of the ethic Europeans wants to do those jobs in the first place. I’m sure we’ll figure it out in 100 years or so. When everyone will be some variety of brown/yellow/pink.
- cameldrv 3y ago
  In my experience it is the opposite. Americans give about 3x as much per capita to charity as Germans, for example. In continental Europe generally you will also see strong anti-immigrant and anti-minority sentiments expressed in casual, middle class society that I haven’t seen to anywhere near the same degree in the U.S.
  - forgetfreeman 3y ago
    The real pisser: the overwhelming majority of those "charities" are either fundamentalist religious organizations with deeply troubling agendas or thinly camouflaged tax shelters for the obscenely wealthy. Ain't that a kick in the head?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - rfrey 3y ago
    A huge fraction of that charity is donations to the church one is a member of, much of which money goes to church salaries, property maintenance, etc. If we included country club dues and gym memberships in the German charity numbers, perhaps the "charitable giving" numbers would be closer.
    - cameldrv 3y ago
      Donations to religious organizations were about 28% of donations in the U.S. If you excluded all of the charitable donations to churches, the U.S. numbers would still be more than twice as much as Germany. Also, while a large part of the religious donations go to the operation of the church, churches do a lot of other charitable activities such as food pantries, shelters, disaster relief, education, etc. Having lived in both places, charity is simply much more of a part of the culture in the U.S. I think the general feeling in Germany was that taking care of people in trouble was the job of the government and that they paid their taxes and that doing more was not necessary.
      - 3y ago
- pyuser583 3y ago
  That’s funny, when we look at Europeans we see the same thing. Europeans freak out at levels of immigration that are normal in the US.
  - dukeyukey 3y ago
    To be fair lots of European countries have immigration levels comparable to or greater than the US, although a sizeable amount of those immigrants are other Europeans. And it's not like the US "build the wall" isn't also having a moment.
- fyloraspit 3y ago
  If we are being real, isn't the banker probably from Europe though?
michaelmrose 3y ago
Americans are on average selfish, vulgar, greedy, indifferent to injustice, indifferent to suffering, and racist. We like to say shit on social media and occasionally throw a tiny minority of our money and none of our time at the most visible problems resulting in parasites specializing in appearing to do useful things while mostly paying people with degrees to think about helping people. This is why we have people dying for lack of medicine, starving kids, and stories of that random teacher whose humiliation made the rounds on social media who people raised 80k for that one time in place of systemic solutions. America is run by the kind of folks the disreputable folks discussed above would vote for.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 3y ago
  [flagged]

emodendroket 3y ago

As a counterpoint, though, is the very idea of running a business providing end-of-life care evil? It’s not like there’s a government program you can use.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
missedthecue 3y ago
The traditional providers of end-of-life care for most of history were called your own children. This has changed over the last 75 years or so and now people are upset that the cost of providing messy, high stress, praiseless, 24/7 work costs a lot of money.
- emodendroket 3y ago
  Yeah and failing that you were just destitute. Let's not act like that always worked out so great or is a serious solution for today's problems.
  - missedthecue 3y ago
    It's not the solution necessarily but income equals expenditure. They're one and the same. People need to stop pretending that the true cost of hospice care is much cheaper than what's charged today. Look at what non-profits charge. It's still eye watering sums, and not much different than investor owned hospice care quotes. Your greatest hint into the fact that end of life care genuinely costs a lot is that LTC insurers keep going bankrupt. Insurance companies don't like going bankrupt.
- jjeaff 3y ago
  It doesn't cost nearly as much as they charge though. Otherwise, private equity wouldn't be getting involved.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

fithisux 3y ago

Capitalism is always vulture capitalism.

WalterBright 3y ago
Life was so much better in the Soviet Union that they had to build a wall around it and shoot people who tried to escape to capitalism.
- FranzFerdiNaN 3y ago
  There are clearly only two options: capitalism or dictatorship. Nothing else is possible. American capitalism is given by God and the best of all possible worlds. Yes sir.