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Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA

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Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA

#191

Post by majewsky »

dogma1138 wrote: post #183
majewsky wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot to factor in that he's also paying indirectly for employer-provided health insurance. How much is that in comparison?

Same goes for Europe, my national insurance contribution(which doesn't even technically cover healthcare) is £6,664 a year, my employer pays an additional £17,281.19 in NICS a year. Do you think that you and your employer pay more than $30K a year for healthcare? Don't get me wrong there are a lot of things wrong with US healthcare including the costs for uninsured but Europeans pay through the nose direct and indire…

> Do you think that you and your employer pay more than $30K a year for healthcare?

If I add the costs for my grandmother, then that sounds very likely.

The important thing about universal healthcare is that workers pay for those who cannot pay themselves, so it's to be expected that a 30yo developer would pay way more than he gets back out. It's only fair, I'm gonna be old someday and I definitely want my health insurance to cover my expenses when I cannot pay premiums anymore.

Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA

#192

Post by naravara »

tomhoward wrote: post #187
naravara wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I actually spent time consciously deprogramming myself as I become aware of the perniciously racist elements of our culture natch. And it’s not complete. We all harbor some of the racist conditioning, I’m just willing to be cognizant of it because I think perpetuating racist things is worse than being called out on it.

It's good that you are making the effort to "deprogram"yourself. I also put a lot of work into identifying and correcting unhealthy subconscious "programming". I've been doing it for 7 years, and continue to work at it daily. And yes, some of that programming has included judgements of others based on identity group, class, etc. But it's included a lot of things too, including the propensity to judge other people neg…

>Given this, it's not for us to make assumptions about what exists inside others or pronouncements about what others should think or do.

This is basically just solipsism. The human condition is knowable, the concept of social science couldn't exist otherwise.

There are numerous academic, clinical, epidemiological, and business disciplines that depend on doing exactly this. My personal background is in social science that I briefly applied to doing market research. But History, Sociology, Anthropology, Political Science, and tons of other fields also depend on being able to draw conclusions from making generalizable assumptions.

The key problem here is hidden in this statement: >including the propensity to judge other people negatively for not having undertaken the kind of work I've done, or assuming that the same subconscious attitudes that existed in me, equally exist in others.

You cannot make progress on addressing societal problems if the first reaction to even acknowledging the existence of the problem is to react negatively and to take the criticism as a personal attack. Frequently people act like being called racist is worse than actually perpetuating racism and that needs to change. There is no process to engage in that sort of growth in character without promoting some level of discomfort.

Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA

#193

Post by residentfoam »

umvi wrote: post #149
residentfoam wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Italy's healthcare is a circus 1 - Italy was the 4th European country to introduce a smoking ban in public places. 2 - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-19/u-s-near-... "Spain’s health system efficiency ranked third behind Hong Kong and Singapore, followed by that of Italy, which moved up two spots from a year earlier. Italy ranked as the world’s healthiest country in a separate Bloomberg gauge."

> Italy was the 4th European country to introduce a smoking ban in public places. Is the ban enforced? If not, it's just lip service. When I went there 3 years ago (Rome, Naples), people smoked in public EVERYWHERE, even on public transportation. Sometimes I would get on a bus and there would be some guy in the back blowing smoke out of a cracked window

> people smoked in public EVERYWHERE

There are people smoking in Italy as there are everywhere. They were probably smoking down the street and that's fine. But I have never seen anyone smoking in hospitals, restaurants, cafe, buses, etc .. it is illegal and people wouldn't tolerate that.

That being said, of course, there are always people that do not respect the laws as everywhere else in the world.

Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA

#194

Post by dogma1138 »

majewsky wrote: post #191
dogma1138 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same goes for Europe, my national insurance contribution(which doesn't even technically cover healthcare) is £6,664 a year, my employer pays an additional £17,281.19 in NICS a year. Do you think that you and your employer pay more than $30K a year for healthcare? Don't get me wrong there are a lot of things wrong with US healthcare including the costs for uninsured but Europeans pay through the nose direct and indire…

> Do you think that you and your employer pay more than $30K a year for healthcare? If I add the costs for my grandmother, then that sounds very likely. The important thing about universal healthcare is that workers pay for those who cannot pay themselves, so it's to be expected that a 30yo developer would pay way more than he gets back out. It's only fair, I'm gonna be old someday and I definitely want my health ins…

Universal healthcare doesn’t have anything to do with progressive taxation.

Half of the EU doesn’t have single payer and use a public private mix, many of them allow you to not pay for the public system at all above a certain gross pay.

All health insurance schemes are based on the fact that young and healthy individuals pay more than they get, it has nothing to do with universal healthcare or a single payer system.

Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA

#195

Post by rayiner »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #188
rayiner wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of copays is to dissuade you from using services unnecessarily, which is why many countries, even ones with socialized medicine, have copays or similar out-of-pocket charges (Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Finland, etc.). In the typical case where you're not sick, it works out. As to your point about the uninsured--I'm not debating the merits of various healthcare systems, I'm trying to contextualize th…

Copays are pretty universally known to lead towards worse care, while making access inequality worse. (There is also no copay to go to the GP in the Netherlands) 40% of those Americans are not your “typical” American. Americans also on average take 10 days of vacation, while 24% of private industry workers don’t have any day of vacation, and have no job security because they can be fired at any time. They also have t…

Yet, co-payments and the like are quite common. (France has low co-pays, but quite substantial co-insurance requirements.) Indeed, a lower percentage of American healthcare expenditures come out-of-pocket than in a number of European countries: https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/7....

As to wealth. I don't know what source you're looking at. This report shows the U.S. compares quite well to say Germany: https://www.credit-suisse.com/corporate/en/research/research... (pages 40, 44).

28.4% of Americans have under $10,000, while 33.6% have $100,000-$1m. In Germany, 40% are under $10,000, while 34.5% are $100,000-$1m. Switzerland does better than both--just 13.7% under $10,000, and 52.1% in $100,000-$1m.

Also, American wealth is not as high as you'd expect because America's savings rate is very low (5%, versus 10% for the EU and almost 15% in France). This is a trend that long predates things like soaring healthcare expenditures, and it has more to do with American consumer culture.

Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA

#196

Post by malvosenior »

naravara wrote: post #192
tomhoward wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good that you are making the effort to "deprogram"yourself. I also put a lot of work into identifying and correcting unhealthy subconscious "programming". I've been doing it for 7 years, and continue to work at it daily. And yes, some of that programming has included judgements of others based on identity group, class, etc. But it's included a lot of things too, including the propensity to judge other people neg…

>Given this, it's not for us to make assumptions about what exists inside others or pronouncements about what others should think or do. This is basically just solipsism. The human condition is knowable, the concept of social science couldn't exist otherwise. There are numerous academic, clinical, epidemiological, and business disciplines that depend on doing exactly this. My personal background is in social science…

> The human condition is knowable, the concept of social science couldn't exist otherwise.

The fields of social "science" are having an existential crisis. It's not science if you can't reproduce it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

> Frequently people act like being called racist is worse than actually perpetuating racism and that needs to change.

Calling someone a racist when they're not is just as bad as perpetuating racism. This is why people perceive your argument to be a personal attack, because it is.

> There is no process to engage in that sort of growth in character without promoting some level of discomfort.

If you're unwilling to question your own assumptions and experience discomfort, then you are also not growing in character.

Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA

#197

Post by standardUser »

dogma1138 wrote: post #175
standardUser wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having employer-provided health insurance in the United States does not mean it does not cost the employee as well. Many companies require the employee pay part of the premiums, especially for families, and there are many, many out-of-pocket costs that people must pay even when they have insurance. In the US, there were about 1.4 million bankruptcies every year before Obamacare. There are around 700,000 per year now.…

$800 is less than the 15-25% health tax you’ll pay in Europe.

That is the entire point. Europeans have less disposable income because of higher taxes, and Americans have more disposable income but have to spend it on things paid for in Europe by taxes.

Education fits this pattern too.

Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA

#198

Post by thatfrenchguy »

rayiner wrote: post #195
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copays are pretty universally known to lead towards worse care, while making access inequality worse. (There is also no copay to go to the GP in the Netherlands) 40% of those Americans are not your “typical” American. Americans also on average take 10 days of vacation, while 24% of private industry workers don’t have any day of vacation, and have no job security because they can be fired at any time. They also have t…

Yet, co-payments and the like are quite common. (France has low co-pays, but quite substantial co-insurance requirements.) Indeed, a lower percentage of American healthcare expenditures come out-of-pocket than in a number of European countries: https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/7... . As to wealth. I don't know what source you're looking at. This report shows the U.S. compares quite well to s…

> France has low co-pays, but quite substantial co-insurance requirements

Not sure what you mean here. Do you mean things like le forfait hospitalier ? Which is like 20 bucks a day you're in the hospital (if your complementary insurance doesn't reimburse you). Usually you're at 80-90% coinsurance when you go to the hospital in the US with a top-tier insurance (which is going to run you ~1000-10000$ a day). Your source is also a 2003 document, which predates a lot of the current health crisis in the US.

> This report shows the U.S. compares quite well to say Germany

You're cherry-picking here: Germany is pretty well known to have lower wealth because of a prevalence of renting.

Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA

#199

Post by ixtli »

rayiner wrote: post #147
ixtli wrote: post #4

My intuition about this as someone who grew up in America and has traveled internationally quite a bit is that nowhere else on earth are the middle classes so convinced that one day they will be "millionaires" than here. This causes them to act against their own best interests. (This was observed by Engels long ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consciousness )

[flagged]

I sense an implication that it’s not possible to evaluate the ends either group is voting for in this example. The nobility of the action depends on what you’re trying to achieve. Also, don’t mistake me for someone who’s interested in the desires of rich liberals :)

Re: Rich countries tend to have a bigger middle-class, except the USA

#200

Post by tomhoward »

naravara wrote: post #192
tomhoward wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good that you are making the effort to "deprogram"yourself. I also put a lot of work into identifying and correcting unhealthy subconscious "programming". I've been doing it for 7 years, and continue to work at it daily. And yes, some of that programming has included judgements of others based on identity group, class, etc. But it's included a lot of things too, including the propensity to judge other people neg…

>Given this, it's not for us to make assumptions about what exists inside others or pronouncements about what others should think or do. This is basically just solipsism. The human condition is knowable, the concept of social science couldn't exist otherwise. There are numerous academic, clinical, epidemiological, and business disciplines that depend on doing exactly this. My personal background is in social science…

You can call it solipsism for your own reasons, but what have you done to ensure you're operating with adequate levels of humility, compassion and objectivity?

It's not a clinical setting or a formal study involving willing participants. Invoking academic concepts to make unsolicited diagnoses of people's inner thoughts and motivations is not ethical, nor a good-faith form of discussion, and doing so can only bring about more polarisation and resistance.

It's due to this propensity among activists across the political spectrum, that our standard of discourse is so low, and that hardline ideological positions keep becoming more entrenched.

For this to change, we need more people to undertake deep inner work on themselves for sincere and earnest reasons, rather than making unsolicited diagnoses of strangers on internet discussion boards and espousing simplistic explanations for the deeply complex problems in the world for the sake of ideological point-scoring.

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