191–200 of 387 posts
It's a complicated issue.. but every person or family that makes a level up transition (without rent-seeking) like. poor -> middle middle -> upper upper -> rich/millionaire millionaire -> billionaire have my respect.
Only the first one has my respect. The second one I'm neutral towards, the others fail as human beings in my view.
I was disabled by bad surgery and lost my career. No system that ostensibly should have helped, did. Denied. Denied. Denied. YEARS of adversarial, not default helpful, meetings and challenges and interviews. I saw people worse than me refused help. I saw real time as people who knew me for years or life, who respected me and my career choice helping others, decided I was a lazy mooch who wasn't trying hard enough, wa…
Yet in capitalist societies, the blame is never on government, and is put squarely on the individual. It's YOUR fault you're sick. It's YOUR fault you're lazy. It's YOUR fault blaa, YOUR FAULT...
The costs of capitalism as a form of governmental policy are just as hidden as the externalized costs in everything around us. When do we start counting deaths due to extreme poverty? When do we count deaths due to 'Corporate Death Panels' (aka: insurance companies), and not having socialized medicine? When do we count the deaths of 'spreading democracy' via hegemonic expansion? When do we start counting illness and deaths resulting in subsidizing diabetes-inducing foods (corn, wheat, sugar, etc)? When do we start counting the extreme losses incurred (deaths, property, etc) about ignoring climate change?
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I'm from Norway. The backside of the medal when it comes to welfare services of that kind is the rather humiliating process you have to go through to actually get them. I've heard many stories about this. Yes, you'll get help if you do as they say, but it can feel very invasive at times. Some clueless bureaucrat will need to know about your finances and all your medical issues, and if it's not a clear-cut case, these…
Here in New Zealand you don't get asked any questions about finances or being able to afford it but if it's elective and not urgent you'll be prioritised behind those who need the healthcare urgently. No bureaucrats involved (unless it's very specialised care like experimental medication or the need to send someone overseas) just the doctors and specialists. Public healthcare isn't the same in every country.
I haven’t lived in NZ for like 12 years so I could be wrong.
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That license may also require formal schooling in the amounts of many hundreds of hours of instruction as well...
But what it usually requires is an eight hour course in which you're told repeatedly that you need to sterilize combs in a solution that kills lice so you don't spread lice. Let's not pretend that licencing requirements are always some sinister cartel action to limit the number of nail-painters in a given municipality. Usually they're just a response to some obviously avoidable consequence of a large number of unlice…
This generalizes to basically every industry unless the labor pool is so small that the bad places to work can't find new employees faster than they wash out.
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I feel like it's partly made to avoid people abusing the system. In France for example a lot of people go to the doctor for the most ridiculous things because 1: it's free (at least at the individual level) and 2: it's an easy way to get a sick leave (sick leaves have been exploding in the last few years). Same with emergency rooms, people don't know what an emergency is, they just use them as walk in clinic. Every t…
>it's free (at least at the individual level) Is it though? As far as I remember, to visit a doctor you had to pay €25 out of your pocket at the moment of the visit, 70% of which would be refunded by your health insurance at a later point (under the state system, and potentially more if you're paying for the additional private insurance or "mutuelle".
I was disabled by bad surgery and lost my career. No system that ostensibly should have helped, did. Denied. Denied. Denied. YEARS of adversarial, not default helpful, meetings and challenges and interviews. I saw people worse than me refused help. I saw real time as people who knew me for years or life, who respected me and my career choice helping others, decided I was a lazy mooch who wasn't trying hard enough, wa…
"get out of you don't like it" Nobody saying this has actually researched it. Too many people in the states are under the impression you can just up and move to a European country, no problem. One friendly-but-clueless acquaintance got flown back from Heathrow for asking the immigration officer about where to find jobs when she landed. If you don't/can't: * work in tech or medicine * go to university in Europe in a h…
I think the question should not be "Why are there so many poor in USA", but "Why does it suck so much to be poor in USA". I believe that the urban layout and exorbitant healthcare costs are the main issues. If poor neighborhoods were walkable and had cheap supermarkets with fresh produce then you wouldn't need a car, and the density would mean that you have plenty of potential friends within walking distance so you w…
Urban (and rural!) sprawl makes the economic burden of car ownership universal and unavoidable.
Changing course on urban planning and zoning could do a lot of good.
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Dunno about UK. Settling in Poland is not that hard, although no piece of cake either. I believe you can get a job with the associated temporary residence permit, extend this as many times as necessary to meet the uninterrupted legal stay requirements, then apply for the permanent residence. Getting citizenship is probably a bit harder but not impossible - about a thousand people get it in Poland each year by the dec…
"Get a job with the associated temporary residence permit" I'm not familiar with Poland specifically but this is generally the insurmountable barrier for most folks. Remember not everyone is a dev! "Sick person who works at Best Buy and drives for Lyft on the side" is going to have a really hard time with that step. Generally speaking, employers need to make a reasonable enough case that they couldn't get an EU perso…
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I don't think Democrats (or Republicans when they take power) are clever/smart/kind/honest enough to offer universal single-payer healthcare without rationing. Is there an intent to take my health care choices away, and is that intent benevolent or malicious? You paint a very abstractly wonderful picture, so let's assume yes and benevolent if rationing is to be expected given the finite tax base. I still need more de…
my employer and I pay through the nose for my decent healthcare right now [...] Under your universal single-payer healthcare system, will I still be able to pay quadruple-through-the-nose to buy supplemental insurance Here in the UK, the private health insurance arranged by my employer costs them $450 per year. I don't know how much US insurance costs your employer, but I assume it's several times more, rather than s…
I was disabled by bad surgery and lost my career. No system that ostensibly should have helped, did. Denied. Denied. Denied. YEARS of adversarial, not default helpful, meetings and challenges and interviews. I saw people worse than me refused help. I saw real time as people who knew me for years or life, who respected me and my career choice helping others, decided I was a lazy mooch who wasn't trying hard enough, wa…
"get out of you don't like it" Nobody saying this has actually researched it. Too many people in the states are under the impression you can just up and move to a European country, no problem. One friendly-but-clueless acquaintance got flown back from Heathrow for asking the immigration officer about where to find jobs when she landed. If you don't/can't: * work in tech or medicine * go to university in Europe in a h…