Comment by nkrisc
14 days ago
Oh, those pesky consumers getting in the way of the innovation of the free market with their protections. If only they could be fully exploited for maximum value extraction without interference.
14 days ago
Oh, those pesky consumers getting in the way of the innovation of the free market with their protections. If only they could be fully exploited for maximum value extraction without interference.
This attitude is why EU countries are mostly quite poor compared to the US and have relatively unproductive and low-tech economies. You bring it upon yourself.
People die from inability to afford something as fundamental as healthcare in the US. You are poorer than any European ever could be.
> You are poorer than any European ever could be
Are you talking about me, personally, or Americans in general? I suppose it doesn't really matter - you'd be wrong in either case. The median person in the poorest US state is richer than the median person in the UK, for example.
Most Americans grumble about paying for healthcare, and we are getting ripped off, but it's also very rare for someone to actually die because they can't afford it. Anyone in the top, say, 80% of American society has some form of employer-subsidized insurance.
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> This attitude is why EU countries are mostly quite poor compared to the US and have relatively unproductive and low-tech economies.
Source? Are you adjusting for cost of living, per capita, and using the median?
> Source?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
> Are you adjusting for cost of living, per capita, and using the median?
Yes, yes, and no (irrelevant because it barely shifts the result)
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I’m an American. I wish we had these protections.
And the above attitude is why the US is a joke with people who can't afford education, healthcare, or a home, 70+ yo still working their ass off in McJobs, crumbling public infrastructure, homeless and billionaires laughing all the way to the bank...
Then you're comparing countries with better distributed quality of life based on GDP or the presence of billionaires and unicorns, as if between you, Zuck, and Musk you have an average wealth of $500B. There are much poorer GDP-wise countries where people live better and are happier than the US :)
> And the above attitude is why the US is a joke with people who can't afford education, healthcare, or a home
The median American has all of these things better than the median European, except maybe healthcare. That's tough to compare. Some countries like the UK clearly have worse healthcare than the US.
Most of the top colleges are American. American homes tend to be much larger and nice than European homes.
> Then you're comparing countries with better distributed quality of life based on GDP
The distribution is really not that skewed. In most states, median income is within 40% of mean income.
Whether you compare median or mean, Americans reliably come out ahead, except for a few small Euro countries (mostly tax havens for American companies).
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Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...
US ranks 3 by mean but 15 by median. It's ahead of most European by mean but by median most West European are ahead. And this doesn't adjust for property prices.
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Billionaires making more money sure helps pay my hospital bills.
That's exactly what I think when I read one of these "EU stifles innovation" comments. It sounds to me like the equivalent of not wanting socialized healthcare because "the poors" might get it, not caring about the fact that you're the one who will benefit.
This is the "everyone in the US is a temporarily embarrassed millionaire" of consumer rights. Everyone in the US is a temporarily embarrassed capitalist overlord.
The resistance to socialized healthcare in America can be easily understood without resorting to bizarre strawmen about hating poor people. Healthcare is of course a huge part of our economy and lives. Many (most?) people are satisfied with the status quo and are hesitant to see (what they consider to be) a huge increase in government power, spending, and general involvement in their lives. It's the same impulse that motivates people to oppose new housing -- people are loss averse and hate change.
Will it be a huge increase in spending? Isn't it estimated to reduce costs by a lot?
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This is a strawman.
"Rich" people don't want socialized healthcare because of perceived or real disadvantages of that system. Not because "the poors might get it".
Also the "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" is another strawman, used by those who dislike capitalism. People can and do support a variety of causes and policies without they themselves benefitting from them.
> "Rich" people don't want socialized healthcare because of perceived or real disadvantages of that system. Not because "the poors might get it".
That's fair, I should have said "because the poors might benefit". Rich people don't like socialized healthcare because they, by definition, will pay for people who can't afford it.
The problem is when people who will benefit from this identify with people who will lose from it.
> People can and do support a variety of causes and policies without they themselves benefitting from them.
They do, but here we're talking about the opposite: People being against policies they benefit from, because they identify with the group that will not.
P.S. I liked your comment, it was a reasoned reply that furthers the debate, thank you.
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