691–700 of 767 posts
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And despite this, those socialised systems still have better outcomes per dollar spent.
Maybe if you can stomach the waiting times but then the private medical sector wouldn't be growling so rapidly for procedure the state also does.
https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/healthcare-wait-times...
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/242e3c8c-en/1/3/2/index....
This is a bit of a frame trap. Here’s another metric: ==2021== Life expectancy in EU: 80 Life expectancy in US: 76 ==Rolling back to 2008== Life expectancy in EU: 79 Life expectancy in US: 78 What’s the point? Maybe GDP isn’t the most important indicator. The US can double it’s GDP by making healthcare more expensive and extracting every last dime from the elderly, but can it actually improve quality of life for peop…
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The EU has better social support. However, the US dodged the austerity fad bullet in the 2010s. A lot of the EU really fell for it hard. Austerity is a fantastic way to inhibit growth.
Austerity means to spend less on public services and infrastructure. Doesn't that mean the US was in near-constant austerity prior to Biden and the IRA?
The UK for example made deep cuts to healthcare and education, cost a lot of people jobs right at the worst possible time (on the heels of the Great Recession). Many smaller worse off countries did even worse.
The austerity in Europe was far, far worse than anything that was happening in the US. The US government finance establishment for whatever reason was not infected by that particular bug. The US passed a large stimulus bill and in general was in a stimulus mindset.
Europe on the other hand thought it could cut its way out of a crisis.
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Eisenhower put it well. "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick sch…
With all due respect to Eisenhower, this is an example of incredible political myopia. A country does not exist in a political vacuum and has to be able to protect its freedom and the very right to exist. So freedom is not free but comes at a price. How high the price is depends on the situation. Sometimes it's very high, unfortunately. Complaining about this fact is as productive as complainig about gravity: if only…
Americans don't even know what genuine "national defense" feels like. Instead, we have a world-class propaganda complex dedicated to rationalizing our unnecessary overseas military adventures and proxy wars.
The idea that blowing up a government or tribe in Africa or Asia to open up resource extraction (natural or financial) for a Western MNC will benefit the "freedom" of the average American is totally absurd.
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Evidence? Evidence against: https://davidcard.berkeley.edu/papers/mariel-impact.pdf
The evidence is math. Even if you have a flat rate and everyone in the population is equally benefitted with social services, there are 50% of people who are contributing less than they take and 50% who are contributing more than they take. That looks even worse when we relax the flax rate assumption (most countries have progressive taxation) and the amount of social benefits a given segment receives (poor people ten…
Already your argument is falling apart. Government spending goes disproportionately to children and the elderly who don't work. Workers, even low skill ones, are almost always a net positive.
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I'm responding to a (one of the many) cases of people being strangely upset and irrational about a simple fact about the US doing better in this one metric recently. There is no "opposite" about it, I never said it does not happen the other way around, I'm questioning why it is happening this way around in this thread. And again that is making people upset and bringing up other unrelated things, which is quite ironic…
> If it happens both ways then it doesn't matter why, Wrong. [snip bitterness] While we're dispensing with unsolicited advice about what is and is not important in how we think, you can just choose to not be upset by this stuff. The fact is here that lots of people are getting irrationally upset by the this GDP story. You can make peace with that and just move on without having to start bashing America or Americans.…
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Sources? The data I've seen says the exact opposite. Edit: Also my link has the Gini inequality index as the last column, where the US is literally sandwiched between Congo and Algeria, towards the bottom...
https://archive.is/Gg6k8 Also, in the GINI table on the wiki page, Netherlands and Sweden have more wealth inequality than the US. Also, I find the GINI formula quite flawed as it puts India as being more equal than many EU states which I find hard to believe. To me wealth inequality is how much of the country's wealth the top % own versus the bottom %, and at least in Germany and Austria it's pretty bad.
That's exactly what the GINI formula is, though. (Pedantry: the formula can be applied to any measurement, be it income or wealth or blueberries. We'll assume wealth.)
The reason some of those numbers look weird to you is that the most common form of wealth is house ownership. In Germany, Benelux and Scandinavia house ownership is quite low, while in Southern and Eastern Europe it is extremely high.
Who is better off? Someone who inherited a home, or purchased it relatively easily, but earns a weak salary? Or someone who must rent because he cannot afford a house, but earns a much higher salary and has more disposable income?
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The top 10% of American households own 89% of US stocks, and the top 1% own 50% of US stocks. The benefits have almost entirely accrued to a small minority at the top. Some of the 35+ cohort are doing exceedingly well, but most just have a primary residence (with a mortgage), some limited retirement savings, and maybe a small investment account. Those people are still working for a living, and likely have experienced…
Since ~2012 disposable income for Americans has lapped that of Europeans. See for yourself. https://dart.lisdatacenter.org/dart
https://www.bls.gov/blog/2023/more-ways-to-look-at-wages-and...
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Take a look at net contribution to Danish welfare state over time. https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/images/print-e...
The immigrants will have children that will be better-acclimated and contribute more, no?
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It's not a fact that the US needs to spend 50% of the global military budget. If anything is myopic, that is. It can still be argued that it's worth the expenditure. But the cost should be weighted against the alternatives. Neither Russia or China can be said to threaten the US with their military, except with nuclear weapons, but no defence budget protects against those.
It's also myopic to think that having a large conventional army that deters rivals from attacking smaller trade partners is not beneficial. Also, the US Navy protects vital global sea lanes that benefit US trade. Also: > Neither Russia or China can be said to threaten the US with their military China is arming up at a huge pace, even outside of nukes.
No one suggested that it isn't beneficial.
What I said is that the benefit has to be weighted against the alternative benefits.
> China is arming up at a huge pace, even outside of nukes.
I'd argue that one large reason they're doing so is the threat they perceive themselves to be under from the large US military.