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Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

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Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#741

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This is a bit of an aside, but why isn't medical tourism more popular in the US? If you could set aside a couple tens of thousands of dollars, as a rainy day fund, you could get close to the very best possible care for even serious conditions from countries that have highly developed medical tourism sectors. Granted, I acknowledge, that the US will likely still provide better care at the absolute high end, and asking…

The sort of people who can set aside a couple tens of thousands of dollars are also the sort of people who probably have good health insurance through their job. Generally, the US's healthcare problems _mostly_ impact low to middle income people, and they usually can't just magic up 30k or so.

100%. I have known a couple of people that did some form of "medical tourism", mostly for expensive dental work. In both cases they did some form of tech contract work as a sole proprietorship and bought their own health insurance (not through a partner). The overlap of people who can save up thousands of dollars for treatment abroad and have poor health insurance is probably not too large.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#742

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> his policies are relatively common sense and middle of the road Free buses and free child care are not remotely common policies in the US. Ditto for govt-run grocery stores. And freezing rent for controlled units.

> Free buses and free child care are not remotely common policies in the US. Ditto for govt-run grocery stores. While not common, free buses do exist throughout the US and Europe. Free childcare is uncommon. IDK where that actually exists. Government run stores is actually very common. Many states run the liquor stores. A few cities have government run grocery stores. Freezing the rent on rent controlled buildings is…

New Mexico is experimenting with free child care. Canada has nationalized its own system and while it isn't free, it is heavily subsidized.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#743

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Communism is literally when the government owns the means of production. Owning the means of distribution is not far from that at all.

There is no government in an end stage Communist society.

Interestingly "no government" also appears to be exactly what is happening in the US with what some people might describe as end stage Capitalist society.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#744

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That’s not even the point though. You can always do these things but you still have no cultural power and you’ve yielded the important structures and financial capitals. That’s not a long term strategy. And it’s not that difficult to win these things, especially when you look at how objectively poor the oppositions performance has been in them. Historically they’ve been contested.

> You can always do these things but you still have no cultural power That's when you use the power of the purse to contractually bind private businesses, non-profits, universities, etc, to your preferred values. Capital beats cultural power (or so goes the current gamble) Edit: do I need to insert hyperlinks for the strong-arm tactics this administration has tried to force contractual counter-parties to adopts it's…

Those are just tactics though. So long as the cities are uncontested there’s no real long term plan. Just being somewhat competitive in them or having a presence.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#745

I hope this win signals (to both parties) that voters are receptive and will get engaged when a clear message is presented about cost of living and quality of life issues. Some of which are taken for granted in most other western countries. I’m no political wonk, and I’m curious what others with more insight might say about his ability to fund and implement his polices. I’m reminided of Obama and his hopeful message…

Obama was hated by San Franciscan progressives because he came in with all of these promises and then backtracked on almost all of them. He basically turned into a Bush-lite, and he even maintained every single one of Bush's policies as well as deadlines. For example, he talked a lot about abortion and then immediately said it wasn't a priority for him once he got into office. He never closed Guantanamo and in both e…

> ACA is a failure and the only thing it did was make it mandatory and unaffordable at the same time.

This is absolute, unequivocal bullshit. I get that you aren't under 26, that you don't need subsidies, never were denied coverage for having had the audacity to get sick years before, and that you've never had to pay for expensive care, so you probably don't know what you're talking about in the first place, but suggesting it was a "failure" is absurd. The idea that actual coverage was less affordable after the ACA passed is such spectacular nonsense I don't even know where to start.

Sometimes it's ok to NOT have big, strident opinions on things you know you don't even slightly understand, and to ask questions or approach things with curiosity, instead.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#746

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Western Europe would have been collapsing right now if daddy cold capitalist didn't show up with gas and guns to drive away the Russian bear. Western Europe has been on vacation for 30 years. There is no future where they can stay on the path they have been on. European leaders recognize this, but how the hell do you get a generation raised with an easy life to recognize this? Germans work 400 hours a year less than…

This is what working in a toxic working culture does to a person. "Because I only have one week of PTO a year and have to be constantly add afraid of being fired, everyone should be!"

Europe has a borderline shrinking economy, and completely missed out on the tech wave of the last 25 years.

So you have all of Europe using American software, running on American or Chinese hardware, all imported rather than home built.

This "foreign dependent" theme repeats again and again as you go through why Europeans need to get off their asses and drop their perceptions towards industry.

And this doesn't even mention the population age crisis.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#747

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How about if that is diabetes, or something else that does not depend on lifestyle choices?

You're kidding right? Look up how many people have type 2 diabetes, greater than 90%

Assuming they mean type 1 yields a better dialogue.

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#749
post #585

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Agreed. Really hoping that a conservative candidate with a pulse can run in a city with a campaign that targets younger voters. I think that a socially aware fiscally conservative YIMBY would have a real chance in a lot of cities. The fact that Zohran won should be a wake up call to both parties, but I won’t hold my breath. I’m just glad that it seems like people actually care, even if I think it will end up poorly.…

> socially aware fiscally conservative YIMBY .. that's not a conservative, though. Especially not in the culture war era.

Seems a bit reductive, I know people that match the description :)

Re: Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral race

#750
post #727
post #588

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As a Brit who has been exposed to the blanket coverage of this on social media: Mamdani is going to be like Sadiq Khan. Popular with people in the city, while those outside run endless weird fantasy "news" scare stories because he's a Muslim.

I'm a Londoner who voted for Khan. There's a difference in that contrary to all the scapegoat stuff in the right wing press, Khan has had largely sensible middle of of the road policies. And where he has deviated from the average, on air pollution, it's been stuff I'm in favour of - I have desire to get sick/die from that. Mamdani seems like a nice guy but some of his policies seem a bit bonkers - state owned retail…

Isn't it proposing running like five grocery stores to test? That's not bonkers or radical. Or even expensive. It seems like the type of experiment HN would love.
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