221–230 of 231 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Individuals in such hospitals can still very much seek profit.
Care to explain what you mean specifically?
https://www.trillianthealth.com/market-research/studies/hosp...
This one is ironic because they're touting the inflating admin headcount as a good thing:
https://www.athenahealth.com/resources/blog/expert-forum-ris...
This makes it sort of obvious how large the US welfare state is. Medicaid: 10% "Safety Net": 7.1% Social Security: 22.6% Medicare: 14.2% 53.9% of the federal budget is spent on welfare. That seems roughly in line with most Western nations.
Social Security isn't really welfare -- it's more like a nationwide retirement plan, whereby I'm getting X back in future dollars for Y paid in now.
Medicare isn't really welfare either -- it's medical insurance that I am paying for in advance.
(Now you can argue that a percentage of SS and Medicare is welfare because there is a floor on how much you receive regardless of what you put in, though you have to have paid in for at least 10 years to be eligible to receive anything.)
So that really just leaves Medicaid and Safety Net as true welfare: 17.1%.
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>each taxpayer could adjust little sliders on each category to allocate where they personally would like their taxes to go. If that were the case, I'd go all in on hookers and blow.
> The federal government spends $222k per second
And when it comes to that discretionary Budget, roughly 1/3 goes to the Military and 1/3 goes to Debt Servicing.
And the primary reason we have so much debt is because of the military spending, since that's our biggest expense and because the government can't borrow to fund SS and Medicare.
So basically, we taxpayers are funding a military state and subsidizing the defense industry (while being told that subsidizing any other industry is "un-American".
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[flagged]
That's not the only way at all; all I'm saying is it becomes harder to convince the whole of society to adopt social safety nets if they positively affect people that look/act different from someone. I'm just trying to be honest that many many many Americans are racists.
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Downvote all you want, but y'all still haven't explicitly named the linkage between demographic diversity and American tax policy vis-a-vis threadbare social safety. Instead of asking the reader to fill in the gaps, I challenge anyone who believes it to explain the mechanism linking the diversity prior/stimulus to the tax policy result, and why it only happens in America.
America is broadly racist, that's exactly my point!
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Of course you should make military spending more efficient. But again, to avoid partisan bickering, you should shift spending in the category. Don't cut waste in department A and allocate to department B. Maybe shift from buying fewer jets and more drones. It doesn't have to be political, it's not a money problem. Government takes more than enough money. Again, percentage of government money that goes to social progr…
> But again, to avoid partisan bickering, you should shift spending in the category... It doesn't have to be political, it's not a money problem. We can't really have this conversation from the mindset that the status quo is inherently apolitical. The US spends more than those "social democracies" on the military in both absolute and relative terms. Since total spending is the same, that means we also spend less on s…
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America is broadly racist, that's exactly my point!
So the root problem isn't the amount of "diversity", but racism.
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So the root problem isn't the amount of "diversity", but racism.
Sure. But it is brought to the surface due to diversity. I imagine many European nations are close to if not equal in their racism but are not brought face to face with it because their cultures are not quite as diverse.
If Americans continue to believe that racism is inherent in them (and everyone else, including Europe), then I see no hope[1] for achieving any kind of reform that benefits the majority with regards to social safety nets.
> I imagine many European nations are close to if not equal in their racism but are not brought face to face with it because their cultures are not quite as diverse.
This smells like a variation of the just-world fallacy; European countries harbor some fervent animus towards the Romani, but not enough to cut their nose to spite their face as Americans do.
1. My lack of hope is somewhat tempered because America has proved that it can overcome some bigotry from the past: lots of formerly targeted groups are now having a much better time in the present: the Chinese, Irish, Greeks, Italians, Japanese and Jewish people. So, things can change.