I disagree. That is precisely the thing that needs to be unpacked and rebutted, because it’s the actual thing these people are worried about. Not the financial sustainability of Social Security, or whatever.
I disagree. That is precisely the thing that needs to be unpacked and rebutted, because it’s the actual thing these people are worried about. Not the financial sustainability of Social Security, or whatever.
Just look at the Wikipedia page on List of countries by household final consumption expenditure per capita. Americans consume much more than anyone else on the world, and it’s not even close. Americans even consume at a higher level than the “ultra-rich” countries that exceed it in GDP per capita, e.g. 30 percent more than Luxembourg (which is number 2 on the list)!
This covers all forms of consumption, in which healthcare is only a fraction. The discrepancy is so great that it can’t be explained by US healthcare being expensive. It’s the other way round, it’s healthcare consumption that is being pulled along by the rest of the consumption.
While I don’t disagree with the premise of this article, it does a piss poor job at rebuttal. It tries to explain that migrants and asylum seekers won’t get to vote in this next election, don’t draw SS/Medicare benefits today, and anyway the census is only every ten years, etc. But the “great replacement” stuff is about fears about changing the population over the long term, so this kind of counterargument either falls flat or will be interpreted as gaslighting.
The US spends more on healthcare because it spends more on everything. I don’t think people have a good sense of how much Americans consume even compared to their peers in other rich countries.
If you plot healthcare consumption per capita versus individual consumption per capita, you can see that the US is on the trend line. Americans are not spending inherently differently from Europeans, despite the differences in healthcare systems. They just have more of everything, including healthcare.
A new holodomor, this time abetted by the US. Somewhere, Stalin is smiling.
US keeps getting cucked and going back for more.
Not just an issue of military forces. The New Territories were where all the water supplies for Hong Kong Island were located. It would have been a completely untenable situation once the 99 year lease ran out.
This is a composition effect. Democratic candidates who run for safer, more left-wing constituencies feel free to propose more radical left-wing policies, especially if their main threats are other democrats during primaries. They then go on to win because they’re not running in competitive elections. You can use the same reasoning to conclude that Republicans who attack abortion and socialism do better in elections.
foreign aid and health officials … have long supported breastfeeding across the globe. They call it “one of the highest returns on investment of any development activity” because of its well-documented benefits for babies’ health and cognitive growth.
Actually, the scientific evidence for the advantages of breastmilk versus formula is remarkably thin.
Sure, it’s eyebrow-raising for the US to meddle in other countries’ public health policy-making. I’d argue that the US meddles too much in other countries’ policy-making, period, not just in public health. But the unspoken implication behind this article is that allowing formula companies to market their products is causing some kind of public health catastrophe, and that claim is just not scientifically defensible.
In the real world, sensible governments know that getting companies to make investments is a good thing, not a bad thing. Over in the States, Joe Biden is making the investment incentives of the IRA the centrepiece of his re-election campaign. That’s why it’s remarkable to see a government actively trying to drive away investors.
Prospera is still subject to Honduras criminal law, so if there’s any real concern about organized crime they can go after them using the criminal justice system. They wouldn’t need these legal shenanigans.
I haven’t seen any explanation of why the current Honduras is so dead set on shutting down Prospera. At worst, the development is not an economic success, and the cost is borne by the investors. At best, it creates an economic boon to Honduras. Seems like a no-lose proposition, the same reasoning behind many other special economic zones around the world. The only explanation I can think of for the Honduras government continuing to chase this issue is ideological/political hostility. It feels like their energy would be much better spent elsewhere.
Giving automakers an extra three years to keep building gasoline vehicles is not, last I checked, “accelerating the EV transition”…
Someone should make an RBG award for refusing to retire long after it’s obvious you should have. First posthumous award to Diane Feinstein.
Internationally, the US is the main party holding back improved taxation of corporations. In October 2021, the US struck an international deal to revamp global rules on corporate taxation, based on two pillars: getting corporations to pay tax in countries where they do business, and a global minimum corporate tax. Now the US looks set to renege, due to bipartisan opposition in Congress over US multinationals getting taxed overseas.
Even though the Biden administration spearheaded the original deal, they’ve been MIA getting it ratified. Understandably, other countries worry that the US intends to watch them raise taxes while doing nothing in return. To avoid getting backstabbed, some are looking to impose unilateral digital taxes. And the US has threatened these countries, calling the measures unfair discrimination against US companies.
White House is still pussyfooting around, though. From another article (FT):
John Kirby, spokesperson for the US National Security Council, said Schumer had told the White House in advance what he was planning to say. But he sought to distance the White House from the Senate majority leader’s comments, saying that the Biden administration remained “focused on making sure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself, while doing everything that they can to avoid civilian casualties”.
This is the kiss of death. Putting Kamala Harris in charge of an issue means the administration doesn’t think there’s any solution (remember how she was supposed to fix the border?).
White House officials say they have largely reached the limits of their power to protect abortion rights…
Yeah, sounds about right.
The US is decoupling from the global trading system even under Biden. Biden maintained Trump’s block of the WTO appellate judge system (apparently because the WTO had the temerity to rule against the US in a couple of trade cases). He kept the Trump tariffs against China, and he’s had fairly tense trading relations with allies like Japan, South Korea, and Europe, in an effort to court union support. He has strongarmed/blackmailed Taiwan into helping setting up chip production in the US, a distinctly Trumpy move.
So while Trump might add a layer of unpredictability, the general direction of US trade policy is the same no matter who wins the election.
Salon complaining about the NYT having a right wing bias is the ultimate in ultra-liberal wankery. The Times isn’t perfect, far from it, but good grief, get a grip.
Well, there are several big reasons. For example, doctors and nurses in the USA have much higher pay than those in Europe. Part of this is because of policy differences (e.g., the supply of US doctors is artificially restricted by the AMA). But part of it is simply that educated professionals are paid much more in the USA than in Europe, and it’s nothing specific to healthcare.
The point is that when making comparisons between US and other rich countries, the first thing you have to do is to account for the fact that Americans (i) have higher GDP per capita, and (ii) have higher levels of consumption even after compensating for GDP per capita. That should be the first-order effect, with stuff like the public-versus-private issue as second-order effects.
I do agree with the benefits to the US not being proportional to the cost, to a point. Lots of healthcare spending goes into things that don’t really benefit aggregate outcomes, like heroic interventions that end up extending end-of-life by a few months, or treatments that only benefit one-in-a-million conditions. But this is not just an issue for the US; for example, the UK spends 18x on healthcare per capita compared to Thailand, for 2 extra years of life expectancy. And those individuals who get their lives extended by a small amount, or get their rare condition treated, may have different views on the matter.