FA+
Shop
No more middle class means no buffer between rich and poor.
6 years ago
Karno's Rare-Because-He-Never-Has-Time Blather:
This article gave me an "Aha!" moment - it summed up a lot of what I've been complaining about, recently:
https://eand.co/half-of-americans-a.....e-c944c518db6a
"Now, you might object. Are Americans really becoming “poor”? What else would you call people that struggle to afford food, housing, childcare, and healthcare? You can’t call them rich, and you can’t call them middle class. They are poor in the sense that they are deprived of the basics of life, and deprivation is what poverty is. Even far poorer countries, I’d wager, don’t have such dire outcomes — bigger percentages can afford the basics — because medicine or rent or childcare in Pakistan or Nigeria doesn’t cost so relatively much. Americans are indeed growing effectively poorer and poorer now — and it shows in their depression, stress, anger, rage, anxiety, falling longevity and health, not to mention classic turn towards authoritarianism.
Poverty in America, in other words, has become endemic and ubiquitous because its systemic and structural. It’s baked into the system. It’s a feature, not a bug. And most Americans these days, I’d wager, understand this intuitively. Work hard, play by the rules, become something, someone worthy. Be a teacher, engineer, writer, coach, therapist, nurse etcetera. What do you get? You get your pension “raided” (read: stolen) by hedge funds, you get your income decimated by “investment bankers”, you get charged a fortune for the very things you yourself are involved in producing but never earn a fair share of, you get preyed on in every which way the predatory can dream up."
As shown here:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/6430501/
If the tiny minority that has their mitts on the levers of the economy get too greedy, the whole game collapses, and everyone is fucked.
I have seen this with my own eyes, felt it on my own skin - how life is getting harsher and harsher for more and more people, as the top 0.1% suck more and more wealth out of the rest of the country, creating a crazily imbalanced situation of millions of starving poors versus a handful of ultra-rich. The surpluses that fed the charities, the safety margins of US society, are being looted, destroyed. Life in "The richest country on Earth" is getting MEAN.
But the Hamptons are not a defensible position. The 0.1%'s psychotic greed will destroy them too, in the long run. The smarter of them even understand this. But it doesn't slow down their clawing of more and more of the money that should have gone into maintaining civil society, into their money bins: They can't stop, even as they see the Crash coming.
So what can I do about this, you may ask? Nothing much, it seems to me. Except maybe set up a little craft brewery in your garage or other available space, so you can have a little buzz going as you ride the handbasket to Hell with the rest of us suckers.
https://eand.co/half-of-americans-a.....e-c944c518db6a
"Now, you might object. Are Americans really becoming “poor”? What else would you call people that struggle to afford food, housing, childcare, and healthcare? You can’t call them rich, and you can’t call them middle class. They are poor in the sense that they are deprived of the basics of life, and deprivation is what poverty is. Even far poorer countries, I’d wager, don’t have such dire outcomes — bigger percentages can afford the basics — because medicine or rent or childcare in Pakistan or Nigeria doesn’t cost so relatively much. Americans are indeed growing effectively poorer and poorer now — and it shows in their depression, stress, anger, rage, anxiety, falling longevity and health, not to mention classic turn towards authoritarianism.
Poverty in America, in other words, has become endemic and ubiquitous because its systemic and structural. It’s baked into the system. It’s a feature, not a bug. And most Americans these days, I’d wager, understand this intuitively. Work hard, play by the rules, become something, someone worthy. Be a teacher, engineer, writer, coach, therapist, nurse etcetera. What do you get? You get your pension “raided” (read: stolen) by hedge funds, you get your income decimated by “investment bankers”, you get charged a fortune for the very things you yourself are involved in producing but never earn a fair share of, you get preyed on in every which way the predatory can dream up."
As shown here:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/6430501/
If the tiny minority that has their mitts on the levers of the economy get too greedy, the whole game collapses, and everyone is fucked.
I have seen this with my own eyes, felt it on my own skin - how life is getting harsher and harsher for more and more people, as the top 0.1% suck more and more wealth out of the rest of the country, creating a crazily imbalanced situation of millions of starving poors versus a handful of ultra-rich. The surpluses that fed the charities, the safety margins of US society, are being looted, destroyed. Life in "The richest country on Earth" is getting MEAN.
But the Hamptons are not a defensible position. The 0.1%'s psychotic greed will destroy them too, in the long run. The smarter of them even understand this. But it doesn't slow down their clawing of more and more of the money that should have gone into maintaining civil society, into their money bins: They can't stop, even as they see the Crash coming.
So what can I do about this, you may ask? Nothing much, it seems to me. Except maybe set up a little craft brewery in your garage or other available space, so you can have a little buzz going as you ride the handbasket to Hell with the rest of us suckers.
in-before the know-it-all trolls show up
That's why I'm thinking of moving to a third would country, they have nowhere to go but up!
Wait til you have to give your children to traffickers for a "better life" as drug mules so you can eat your spouse in peace(s) while ducking gunfire from a warlord smashed up on cocaine.
Look up, and I'm 100% serious about this, "General Butt Naked". A real General and holy chief of his tribe. Ate the heart of children while raping and slaughtering everything in his path.
I don't think things went up in that time period.
I've been unemployed for over a year, and Can't GET a job
Thank God for the 2nd Amendment.
I mean, how else do you expect for a decent revolution to happen?
Effective, maybe. But certainly not decent. Collateral damage always happens in any war, especially (un)civil wars.
Not sure why you think youth would be a good determining factor for legislation, as young people tend to be inexperienced and make rather poor choices. That doesn't mean bad choices are exclusive to age, not by any measure, but inexperience can be just as deadly as evil intention.
As for the lower wages for politicians, that I can agree with. It makes sense to have term limits to weed out corruption, and a low wage to make sure the people going in are going in for the right reason. The problem is that many get back deals on the side. How does Bernie Sanders or Maxine Waters have MILLIONS of dollars, when their salaries don't go that high? This is one of the reasons legislation has been brought up recently for transparency in funding, but it keeps getting voted down.
I'm not in Canada so I can't speak out of personal experience here, but socialistic healthcare is a joke with the constant wait-times and botched visits. I've seen some documentaries about it and it seems pretty terrible, not to much unlike the U.S.' V.A., which is also a laughing stock of wait times and botched visits trying to keep costs low.
But seriously dude.. stop wishing those you don't agree with to die. Tyrant, dictators, and fascists put people to death for "wrong-think", and I'm pretty sure you do NOT want to be like that. Right?
Not trying to rip on ya or anything either, I think you have the best of intentions for the maximum amount of people, I seriously do. Perhaps the people your around though happen to be speaking of such extremities and has made you psychologically salient to such measures. I don't know, but it's a dangerous path to go down. Even for my worst enemies, I always would wish a fair trial.
That's what justice is, after all :)
io dont live in canada either im from Hawaii, i just know of the Canadian healthcare system being that everyone has it, How it works i dont know either but i know it works because its still 'free' healthcare their providing, which saved the life of a friend that needed heart surgery because it was all paid for, which is nice, So why not have a similar system that works wouldnt that be nice?
i believe sweden has an optimal health care system, i thnk it was them.
Politicians need lower wages like that so they go in for the right reason and not to get their Rolls or bugatii a new paint job or a new yatch for their dog while smoking marijuana with a 100 bill as the paper roll.
as for the rest of the folks, well im surrounded by you all aka all the furries in the community, makes one crazy as it is. So what else you want to nom on me for after my clarification ;P
Everyone has it because it's mandatory to have it, as it's Universal Healthcare from my understanding. If you don't know anything about it, why are you holding it up as a comparative model for something that would effect hundreds of thousands of lives, potentially in the negative? Investigate into the matter before you go praising something, as it might be a bad thing to praise. It's not FREE dude.. it's paid for by the government, which skyrockets taxes and cuts other services, or takes unethical policy measures (especially when offered by foreign countries) for the money's boon. Also, UK has something similar, and it deemed a child "unqualified for treatment" because the survival rate wasn't within the acceptable limits to be worth the financial cost. THEY VOTED TO LET THE KID DIE. The parents begged to pay for it, DENIED. They got donations to pay for it, DENIED. They asked to go to the U.S., where we offered to do it, DENIED. They smuggled the kid out to save him, and I think police were called, on the parents, for kidnapping their own child to save it's life. They got the kid to the U.S., and he lived. https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/25/heal.....-bn/index.html https://www.dailywire.com/news/3321.....-prestigiacomo These are paid by voluntary donations / charities, with some help of government funding through taxes. However, when everyone gets on it, the government can decide who lives and who dies, not to mention it takes FOREVER to see a doctor. Ask anyone in the V.A. how well it works, as it's a socialized health-care system for veterans.
I'm not trying to cut you down or nom on you or whatever, but I think you might be woefully unaware of how things work in things outside of your island, and expressing things as if they work when they have clearly not, shown across several instances, can be dangerous for the naive, inexperienced, or just overly sheltered. I would highly suggest looking some of these things up before praising them. This fandom does indeed have some crazy people, I'm just trying to clarify things as well from the voice of an older generation that has done quite a bit of studying and observations in fields like this, while the younger generations tend to parrot certain puppets and talking heads of people with actually harmful intentions.
They refused treatment on him largely because his disease gave him brain damage and they thought it would be more inhumane to try and treat him considering the poor quality of life he would likely have had. His parents had him on life support for over a year. That decision wasn't based on the "cost" of his treatment.
Your second link refers to Oliver Cameron, who indeed received surgery in the US and is fine. You've put a weird spin on it though, choosing to focus on how "unethical" the choice not to initially pay for his treatment was while ignoring the fact that the treatment was so expensive because the US medical system set the price. "Where we offered to do it" har har har, right, your medical professionals offered to do it FREE right? Because it would be unethical otherwise right? NOPE.
It's like if terrorists kidnapped a kid and demanded a ransom of a quarter million dollars. If the government refused to pay would you point the finger at them as if it's entirely their fault that the situation exists? The specific US medical center is one of the only places that does the specific surgery the kid needed and they set the price. Surgeries don't just "have a cost" devoid of context.
Finally, let me just say, do you know what Canadians say to themselves as they wait their 5 hours to get something medical fixed? "Well shit, at least I and my kids won't be in debt for the rest of our lives when this is over". When things go wrong, it's bad, but if medical mistakes happen in the US it's ALSO bad AND you'll be in debt for the rest of your life even if things go right.
I apologize for the way I responded. People have been actively and in some cases violently pushing horrible things like gassing their enemies into graveyards, and it's been pissing me off as the lack of conversing about any topic is only making enemies on all fronts, and that's the fastest way to run away from peace as possible. That doesn't excuse my curtness though.
I'm sorry for overreacting.
And I don't think I ever offered the excuse that we didn't over price things; because we do. It's horrifically over-priced. But suddenly forcing tax payers to go belly up for everyone else's /potentially/ bad decision making seems like a bad call. The more government sticks in hand in, the worse things get. That seems to have been an understanding by most people for sometime, at least from those I've heard talking about it.
Perhaps I misunderstood; so the US was the only place to have the surgery, U.K. said "No, that's to much; denied", we're not supposed to look at UK as being stingy but are supposed to look at the US as over-priced (agreed on both parts there btw), but when it was offered to be paid for by crowdfunding and charities yet still denied, it was more acceptable? Again, I apparently misunderstood that last part of the original story.
Five hours is acceptable, but I was hearing multiple months to get a check up, and many got misdiagnosed. One lady waited so long her leg problem became an amputation, but they amputated the wrong one, and then had to do the original surgery which left her leg-less. If that's incorrect, then I stand corrected.
There's a lot of grey area here, I don't want to sound like my point of view is the only correct one, I can see things from the parents' perspective. And if it were my kid, I'd want the best care as quickly as possible, damn the price too. But then again, I'm not paying into that system. I understand the need of a governing body to balance the needs of the many against the needs of the few. It's all well and good to see that kid get taken care of but that money had to come from somewhere. You might be robbing Peter to pay Paul, so to speak.
Unfortunately I don't have any data comparing the rates of medical malpractice and/or misdiagnosis in Canada versus the US. I would guess that the rate is lower in a county where you might not be able to afford to see a doctor to misdiagnose you, heh. I can say with some certainty though that a lot more poor people would be dying of easily managed diseases without the Canadian healthcare system. Errors are the exception, not the rule. If they were the rule, if Canadians couldn't trust their medical services, there would be a lot more public outcry, that's for sure. Check out a few Canadian politicians' platforms, do you see a bunch going "we'll abolish the terrible public healthcare system"? Hell no. If they're right leaning, they're all "We'll make the public healthcare system more efficient" and if leftward, they're assuring the public that it will continue to be funded and expanded. And if they're socialist leaning they promise to fund it AND education.
https://www.liberal.ca/realchange/a.....health-accord/
https://www.ontariopc.ca/plan_for_the_people gotta ctrl-f "health" to get through this mishmash
https://www.ontariondp.ca/better-health-care
https://www.greenparty.ca/en/media-.....harmacare-plan
Oh man, see that last one? Someone's complaining about having to pay 10k a YEAR in Canadian dollars for cancer medication. What would that cost in the states?
I don't know where your info on public healthcare comes from but I would wager that the source may not have your best interests at heart.
Also I don't want to come off as if I'm defending anyone's points on anything, I'm just making my own. I really hate talk about killing people made lightly and I think it damages our ability to talk about anything productively. Whether talking about beheading the rich or shooting liberals, I will always stand by the idea that other people have value and you shouldn't ever talk about killing someone's grandson or baby girl as a way to make a political point. Everyone is someone's baby.
I think that there's tons of volunteer and charity cases to make the claim for those types of systems, not to mention long-term billing is always a viable option. The expense is way out of hand, regardless though, and while I don't think everyone's taxes need to go into orbit to help the needy when local charity banks, family members, church-goers, micro communities (such as the furry fandom donating when help is needed), etc could alleviate some of that burden, a huge problem comes from the education system requiring unGodly amounts of scratch to get these trainings; and then forces doctors to charge an arm and a leg so they can fix your arm and/or your leg. Colleges have gotten way to causal with adding zeros to the end of a class's price as if they were treating hyper-inflated currencies of collapsing countries x.x But again, that's just how I see it. I can only go by what I've heard, and so far I haven't heard to many positive things about socialized medical fields.
Yeah, the pharma companies over here are outrageously expensive. Maybe cracking on that would be better then jacking the taxes up though. Many fields in the US political spectrum don't have decent transparency or accountability, so many tax hikes lead to the original plan being neglected and pockets get lined with tax-payer money.
While it seems we don't fully agree on the end result of the topic, I'm glad to see civility and talks of peaceful conversations come alive again.
Thank you. Consider my hope in humanity restored some :)
And then everyone was telling me I was a socialist. I just shrugged and said if thinking about the future of mankind is socialism then I'm just ahead of the curve. And here we are, 20 years later and you all come crawling to me. Mwa ha ha ha ha!
And CPS? Mandatory social work? I mean, they get salty enough as it is with the workload they have, someone that's required by law to do it but hates kids, I could see REALLY funneling kids into group homes and foster care, doing the bare minimum real quick. I see what you're going for, having people learn an appreciation for how the system works by doing it themselves would theoretically close the disconnect between rich and poor. Maybe if we tested people into it to see what best fits their personality and skill set, like they already do when kids are close to graduation (oddly enough the tests I took said I should definitely do social work like psychology, which is partly why that was my major in college).
Some countries have mandatory 1-year conscription into their military even during peacetime when the men turn 18, and from what I hear it does teach them a few useful skills and discipline.
As for capping salaries and funneling extra cash into government programs being socialist, meh. When I look at how much the government wastes on stupid shit already, and now they're cutting taxes from the best sources they could get it from, the only reversal would be to raise them or otherwise heavily modify the tax code for a "fairer" tax, because as it is when we do have a higher top tax rate, the super-rich find any possible way to evade taxes through loopholes and overseas channeling anyway. Lowering it definitely didn't result in the "trickle down effect" by any stretch of the imagination, the corporate chairmen didn't see the tax cut and reward their loyal workers with higher pay, better benefits, etc. Oh no, the fuckers just looked at the vastly higher budgets they had and found new ways to show off their money: Superyachts! Crazy-expensive land investments! Extravagant vacations! By and large they couldn't give a shit about the people under them, they're just lackeys and if any of them raise too much of a fuss, are replaced easily by people that won't complain and will work for less, especially if their job can be outsourced.
The idea is that for 2 to 4 years, you work mandatorily in government jobs. There's a lot of jobs that the government does. Dig ditches, pick up trash, road work, national guard, army, navy, coast guard, air force, accountants, bookkeepers, doctors. It can give you some real experience in the field you might be thinking of going in later. You can think of it as your internship, only this could actually get you a college degree or a scholarship when you're done.
Well, that's also supposing that all the money was being managed properly. Which will never happen anyway.
So *shrugs* It's not like any of this will happen.
I have throught much about the concept of sustainable evil - how oppressive can a system be without collapsing. The theoretical end point is shockingly easy to implement with current means.
Granted, it would require breaking many laws but who investigates the rich?
I hate the "Clinton would have been worse" argument. She didn't win, she doesn't matter, but people keep using her like some sort of boogey man to justify the current situation. As if this is the best of a bad situation. Dude, you have no idea what Clinton would have done and you never will because she lost. She doesn't matter anymore.
Your basically passing rows of kids stuck in internment camps and saying "Don't worry, in my imagination you all would have been much worse off"
And you're happy that the right can still stonewall any legislation? You realize more people voted left (hah, look at me, calling the Democrats 'left', hee hee) than voted Republican right? Like, percentage of the population wise, you're rejoicing that more than half the country won't be able to have legislative power over their own lives and you're hoping the almighty can help keep the Nazi-tolerating party in power?
... oh and people that think that the 2nd Amendment will do anything? The gulf between the military and civilian militias is so huge that unless another nation-state decides to back you with modern equipment and training, you're plainly ass fucked. All that is going to do is basically wreck things more and only give misery and death to those you want to save. All you can do is be a literal nuisance.
The rich aren't the cause. They are humans reacting badly to underlying causes they can't stop. They could react differently and reduce the amount of pain that is coming, but that would require rational thought and they are scared.
I'm betting that Great Depression II will be recognized when the stock markets crash (either late this year or early next). I'm equally certain that it won't heal until the unsupported debt in the economy is finally allowed to be written off as uncollectible instead of continuing to shuffle it around. It's going to take a few more years of rough going.
Only difference is, I mean to survive and actually have a plan of action afterwards.