The United ***show of America

[FartingGnome]

It's always staggered me that a country like the US that claims to be the biggest and best one in the world doesn't have a full public healthcare system like ours.

Your answer lies ultimately in boromike's post #18 - "concentrated into a small number of very deep pockets. The majority of people in USA don't benefit from having the best economy. Their economy is based on the vast majority of people living paycheck to paycheck with no healthcare, no security net or no savings."

They just want to get richer themselves and they control all the levers.

 

[Soutra]

It is a lie because it is concentrated into a small number of very deep pockets. The majority of people in USA don't benefit from having the best economy. Their economy is based on the vast majority of people living paycheck to paycheck with no healthcare, no security net or no savings. They can't complain because they can be fired without cause across most of the country. They work far more hours than we do and the legal minimum holidays is lower than our bank holidays. They aren't required to be given annual leave.

It really isn't. People below the poverty line in the US is about 12%. In the UK it's about 19%.

People in the US with little or no income get free health care. There's no legal requirement on annual leave, but every company does offer annual leave. Hours worked - I don't know if it's more or less than the UK, but in California I doubt it's any more.

It's easy to get jobs, jobs are well paid, and income taxes are very low. Yes, you may get fired more easily, but you get another job.

It's different to the UK. I'm not saying it's better - or worse - just that it's different. If you live there, then you get used to it.

 

[r00fie1]

 

[r00fie1]

View attachment 2320

Morning Red.

 

[dooderooni]

Just for clarification, my measure of a great economy is not that which has the biggest figures, but one which benefits the most people. One where a natural disaster does not pull the rug from under great swathes of people and then open the trapdoor on them for good measure.
It might be big in dollar terms, but it has been knocked to the floor like a boxing bum.

 

[Jedi boro]

It's always staggered me that a country like the US that claims to be the biggest and best one in the world doesn't have a full public healthcare system like ours.

go into twitter now and type “socialist medicine” the us term for it and just see the vitriol on there. Many accuse Fauci of using this as a back door to introduce it.

This is why...

 

[bear66]

It really isn't. People below the poverty line in the US is about 12%. In the UK it's about 19%.

People in the US with little or no income get free health care. There's no legal requirement on annual leave, but every company does offer annual leave. Hours worked - I don't know if it's more or less than the UK, but in California I doubt it's any more.

It's easy to get jobs, jobs are well paid, and income taxes are very low. Yes, you may get fired more easily, but you get another job.

It's different to the UK. I'm not saying it's better - or worse - just that it's different. If you live there, then you get used to it.

The poverty level was $11,000 in the USA in 2009 for your 12% figure.

 

[Alvez_48]

All said above is very much true but the sad fact is it doesn't convert anyone from team a to team b.

I've seen it here just as much, Boris is getting pelters from the left and yet is seen as doing great by the right.

Truth is Pandora's box is open and it turned out to be full of social media. The film about brexit with cumberbatch highlights it well.

The thing that fecks me off about the situation in America is that they had a candidate who would beat trump but instead went for Biden.
He's not even confirmed the nomination and he's getting (quite rightly too) mud thrown at him left right and centre.

 

[sambaDTR]

America, the land of the free. Providing you are white and have money

 

[Wev1]

Has to be said though, no matter how badly they appear to be handling it, and how much of a lunatic they have in charge, their death rate is far lower than ours, and far lower than a lot of countries.

It depends what you're calling the death rate though, and how you're looking at it? Comparing to us is also bad, as we've done a really $hit job too, but anyway:
The USA (200) is half of the UK deaths per million (400), but New York state (which is half the pop density of the UK) has nearly the same deaths as the UK, with 1/3rd of the population, they're on like 1200 deaths per million.
They only have 9 states which are over their average of 200 deaths per million, but four of those are over 400. Some states are having an absolute nightmare, but it's because the states are not acting united, they need to help each other out and all lock down, to help the areas infected badly and to stop their infections spreading. They won't get the idea until the red states get hit bad, but it will be too late by then.

Germany have like 81 deaths per million, and is more than double the population density of USA and surrounded by areas badly infected. That's an example of a comparable country that's done a decent enough job.

 

[SmallTown]

It depends what you're calling the death rate though, and how you're looking at it? Comparing to us is also bad, as we've done a really $hit job too, but anyway:
The USA (200) is half of the UK deaths per million (400), but New York state (which is half the pop density of the UK) has nearly the same deaths as the UK, with 1/3rd of the population, they're on like 1200 deaths per million.
They only have 9 states which are over their average of 200 deaths per million, but four of those are over 400. Some states are having an absolute nightmare, but it's because the states are not acting united, they need to help each other out and all lock down, to help the areas infected badly and to stop their infections spreading. They won't get the idea until the red states get hit bad, but it will be too late by then.

Germany have like 81 deaths per million, and is more than double the population density of USA and surrounded by areas badly infected. That's an example of a comparable country that's done a decent enough job.

Deaths per million. That's the only reasonable way you can measure it.

 

[bear66]

Deaths per million. That's the only reasonable way you can measure it.

The USA is worse than Europe by that measure.

 

[r00fie1]

The poverty level was $11,000 in the USA in 2009 for your 12% figure.

Soutra is taking the michael.
The current number of people unemployed and claiming welfare payments is 20% of the working population.
That obviously doesnt include those not claiming welfare or relying on partners or the black economy to survive.

Heil The Free State of the USA.

Freedom to be [in no particular order]

Unemployed
Homeless
Without proper healthcare [unless you got the $$$$`s]

etc.
We all know.

 

[SmallTown]

The USA is worse than Europe by that measure.

Agree, but better than some individual countries. Such as the United Kingdom

 

[bear66]

Agree, but better than some individual countries. Such as the United Kingdom

And much,much worse than the vast majority of countries in Europe.

 

[BoroMart]

I know we moan about our government, but the US is an absolute mess right now.
Not only do you have possibly the worst person in charge, but they are hurtling towards a re-opening of the "greatest economy in the world" because said economy is being exposed for the lie it is.
On one hand you have the President saying it's not his responsibility to do a raft of things that might reflect badly on him and on the other hand you've got him claiming credit and powers that he doesn't deserve or have. His right-wing cohorts are starting to justify deaths as a price worth paying to restart the economy (or line their pockets).
Last night he had his team produced a chart with the number of deaths per 100k of population to show how well they have done and then he interrupted Dr Birx to ask the assembled reporters if they believed the figures for China and Iran. As if it were a ******* contest and he's celebrating that he's avoided killing many more.
The day previously he'd tweeted and spoken in support of the protesters who were urging Democratic governors to lift lockdowns and possibly create a second wave of infections.
It's this last thing that exposes the lie of their economy. It's not just gun-toting, 2nd amendment Trump groupies who are protesting, it's also small business owners who haven't been able to secure loans from the bail-out package before it ran out or was taken up by companies who didn't really need it and also ordinary folk who simply can't survive on the one-off payment of $1200 or have been unable to claim unemployment benefit. This one-off payment hasn't even reached everyone yet because those without direct deposit facilities are having to wait for a cheque to arrive in the post. Cheques which are delayed while Trump has his name printed in the memo section.
Many Americans are clearly living payday to payday and this coupled with the way their society works is forcing people to want to go back to work even if it means they'll get ill and possibly die. There are record numbers using food banks, lines of cars queuing overnight to get enough food to feed their families.
It should make us wake up and think.

Covid is showing free market neoliberal capitalism for what it is....an uncaring, unpleasent ideology that lets those without wealth die as sacrificial lambs for the rich tax dodging elite.

 

[BoroMart]

It's hardly a lie though. A quarter of the world's GDP, bigger than the next two countries added together, and a lot of it in hi-tec and pharma.

The lie isn't that as a whole they are rich, the lie is that free market capitalism works for the american people, it just works for a few thousand of them that have unimaginable wealth, your average yank is saddled with debt and has little to handover to kids if they live old and feed it all back to healthcare companies. Every man woman and child in the US is born effectively 80k in debt. 1 in 6 americans live below the poverty line, while at the same time the richest 6 individuals are worth a combined 1/2 a trillion.

 

[BoroMart]

It really isn't. People below the poverty line in the US is about 12%. In the UK it's about 19%.

People in the US with little or no income get free health care. There's no legal requirement on annual leave, but every company does offer annual leave. Hours worked - I don't know if it's more or less than the UK, but in California I doubt it's any more.

It's easy to get jobs, jobs are well paid, and income taxes are very low. Yes, you may get fired more easily, but you get another job.

It's different to the UK. I'm not saying it's better - or worse - just that it's different. If you live there, then you get used to it.

I've lived and worked in the US, in one of those areas where wealth and poverty can be seen 5 mins drive from each other, I lived in a rich part of Baltimore for a couple of years, waterside apartment, money to burn, boutique shops and restaurants, porches and ferraris all over......then 10 blocks away you had the projects, with real poverty unlike anything I have seen here. In 2 miles you can literally go from million pound apartments to terraces which you can buy for 20k, but the people that live in them can't afford them.

I can confirm that holidays and sick pay have always been terrible in the US and there is an expectation of long hours regardless what sector you work in. Employment rights barely exist in the US.

Above that 12% of desperately poor people are huge swathes of working classes, that work long hours, for enough reward to live paycheck to paycheck without having any real excess, they work in restaurants for minimum wage, begging for tips or in a factory earning food and enough to top up the 401k to ensure that when health issues kick in after retirement they have enough for the first couple of hospital visits.

If you are in the top 30% you do have an amazing life though, but even the bottom end of that won't leave anything for their children because it'll be sucked out of them in their twilight years.

 

[BoroMart]

All said above is very much true but the sad fact is it doesn't convert anyone from team a to team b.

I've seen it here just as much, Boris is getting pelters from the left and yet is seen as doing great by the right.

Truth is Pandora's box is open and it turned out to be full of social media. The film about brexit with cumberbatch highlights it well.

The thing that fecks me off about the situation in America is that they had a candidate who would beat trump but instead went for Biden.
He's not even confirmed the nomination and he's getting (quite rightly too) mud thrown at him left right and centre.

That's because socialism is a dirty word in america. The press have managed to win the argument that socialism = communism and is theft. It isn't but the vast majority of the US public are either too daft to see it or know the truth but it doesn't benefit them.

 

[Millbrook]

It's always staggered me that a country like the US that claims to be the biggest and best one in the world doesn't have a full public healthcare system like ours.

Your assumption that a full public healthcare system is the best model for health care is open to debate.