Elections; 2024
POSTED BY: THG
UPDATED: Friday, November 21, 2025 00:12
VIEWED: 206031
PAGE 492 of 514
'Only high-income nation without it': Why Americans are Miserable
December 09, 2024
https://www.alternet.org/misery-index/
The happiest countries have capitalist economies and democratic governments, but they provide their people with essential tools for success — tools that American conservatives brand as 'socialist.' Universal health care is one. The United States is the only high-income nation without it.
Americans pay nearly four times as much for prescription drugs and higher costs for hospitalization and doctors than people in other developed countries. More than 27 million Americans still have no health insurance.
The United States' health insurance crisis will become even worse if the Affordable Care Act of 2010, a.k.a. Obamacare, is overturned during President-elect Donald Trump's second term.
As of March, over 45 million Americans were enrolled in Obamacare. Trump tried to kill that option during his first term and says he has 'concepts' to replace it now. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 3.4 million Americans would lose health insurance without Obamacare.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
'Only high-income nation without it': Why Americans are Miserable
December 09, 2024
https://www.alternet.org/misery-index/
The happiest countries have capitalist economies and democratic governments, but they provide their people with essential tools for success — tools that American conservatives brand as 'socialist.' Universal health care is one. The United States is the only high-income nation without it.
Americans pay nearly four times as much for prescription drugs and higher costs for hospitalization and doctors than people in other developed countries. More than 27 million Americans still have no health insurance.
The United States' health insurance crisis will become even worse if the Affordable Care Act of 2010, a.k.a. Obamacare, is overturned during President-elect Donald Trump's second term.
As of March, over 45 million Americans were enrolled in Obamacare. Trump tried to kill that option during his first term and says he has 'concepts' to replace it now. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 3.4 million Americans would lose health insurance without Obamacare.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Oh get fucked dude. Like you give a shit.
The one person you know who figured it all out is the one you're attacking all the time for it.
You would have free insurance right now if you didn't have to make an unfathomable amount of money to pay for all the shit you buy that you don't need. Yanno... like your shiny brand new Ford F150 Lightning you haven't talked about in over a year.
As for that 3.4 Million figure, let's see where those losses actually come from. There are still a lot of people who were not on Medicaid before 2020 and are still on expanded Medicaid for the Covid "emergency", particularly in blue states.
Most of those people who weren't in before Covid are going to lose it, and I'm sure Democrats and the Legacy Media will be trying to claim that those are "cuts" that the Trump administration made.
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Trump is fine.
He is also your current President.
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Quote:The richest of the Rich only have to tell Trump what they want and he freely will do it for them.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
And besides, Trump's picks got rich before they went into government. Democrats get rich once they get in office.
I'll forgive Elon for being a Billionaire if it results in the Pelosi family having everything taken from them before they're thrown into prison.
Even the Koch Brothers Weren’t This Brazen
December 9, 2024, 11:03 AM ET
Until recently, elites and politicians who worked together feared the scandal of the process being revealed, and the public backlash that could come with it.
The energy is different now. “There’s a real shift in ruling-class vibes,” Rob Larson, an economics professor who has written about the new ultrarich and Silicon Valley’s influence on politics, told me. Many of America’s plutocrats seem not to care if people know that they’re manipulating the political system and the Fourth Estate in service of their own interests. Billionaires such as Andreessen and Ackman are openly broadcasting their political desires and “definitely feeling their animal spirits,” Larson said. This feels like a moment of “in-your-face oligarchy.”
That the ultrarich are richer than they have ever been may also be part of the explanation, Larson said. Having more money means exposure to fewer consequences. The last time elites were this vocal in their influence, Larson said, was during the Gilded Age, when multimillionaires such as William Randolph Hearst and Jay Gould worked to shape American politics.
A particularly vocal subset of the ultrarich is steering the ship, and doesn’t care who knows.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/12/tech-billionair
es-trump-administration/680930/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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One Thing Musk and Ramaswamy Could Actually Do to Cut Government Spending
If they’re serious.
While this spending is disguised, it is not fully hidden. The government actually publishes not one, but two tax expenditure budgets, one by the Treasury Department and the other by the Joint Committee on Taxation, listing all of the spending found in the tax code.
We spend about $286 billion per year on exemptions for retirement savings, which are disproportionately tilted toward the wealthy; $242 billion on preferential rates for capital gains, which are also for the wealthy; and about $213 billion for employer-provided health care, which goes only to those lucky enough to have jobs that provide health insurance. The home mortgage deduction costs $25 billion per year.
Musk and Ramaswamy have indicated that they want to go after government spending. If they are serious, they could do a lot worse than starting with the tax code.
But something tells me Musk and Ramaswamy are only interested in cutting certain types of government spending — and this won’t be it.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/12/trump-musk-ramaswamy-doge-
taxes.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:(I don't mention the Ford Lightning, or not having been sick even once in the 21st Century, or my prosperous children/grandchildren/relatives who aren't Trumptards, or anything else, because Trumptards are infuriated by people who aren't like themselves, but which I mean Trumptards are comfortable with being losers who cause their very own personalized catastrophes. See Trump's many legal cases, divorces, and even his obesity for what I mean.)
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Oh get fucked dude. Like you give a shit.
The one person you know who figured it all out is the one you're attacking all the time for it.
You would have free insurance right now if you didn't have to make an unfathomable amount of money to pay for all the shit you buy that you don't need. Yanno... like your shiny brand new Ford F150 Lightning you haven't talked about in over a year.
Most Trumptards I know are deeply hooked on various vices. As expected, they have money shortages. But they are too stupid to make a connection between, say, their alcoholism (which they deny is a problem for themselves) and their pitiful life filled with health problems and shortages of money.
We Legalized Our Sins; Now They Are Coming Back to Bite Us | Opinion
By Matt Robison | Dec 10, 2024 at 4:27 AM EST
https://www.newsweek.com/we-legalized-our-sins-now-they-are-coming-bac
k-bite-us-opinion-1998154
It is hard to have any confidence that President-elect Donald Trump's chosen leadership at federal agencies, or the Republican-controlled congress, will act.
And the harder challenge is that cannabis is itself the tip of an even bigger cultural iceberg tearing through the country. As Michael Lewis brilliantly documented in his podcast Against the Rules, at the same time that cannabis advocates were sinking their teeth into legislatures, online sports betting lobbyists managed to legalize their product in about as many states, unleashing a wave of problem gambling in the country. Today's betting apps attack potential addicts with the ferocity of algorithmic sharks, and there's plenty of blood in the water.
At the same time, how else to describe the last 15 years of having social media in our pockets but a vast, real-time experiment on our brains and social constructs when we're all exposed to highly addictive activities that are known to affect our moods and understanding of basic facts? For that matter, we seem to have let go of the rope on online pornography too—an industry that, according to advocacy group Fight the New Drug, now rakes in $97 billion a year, harvests sensitive viewer data, and produces often violent content that has been seen by three-quarters of American teens and badly distorts their perceptions of normal sex.
We have entered the "yeehaw" era of American governance. And as we keep legalizing all our vices, they seem to be coming back at us awfully hard and awfully fast. So, we shrug and take another dose.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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It’s The Economy, Stupid
December 11, 2024
https://andrewtobias.com/its-the-economy-stupid-4/
Courtesy of the Biden White House:
After decades of trickle-down economics that slashed taxes for the wealthy, diminished public investments, offshored jobs and factories, destroyed unions, and ripped at the social safety net, President Biden has written a new playbook that’s growing the economy from the middle out and the bottom up . . .
... delivering the strongest recovery in the world, and laying a strong foundation
for years to come by:
• Investing in our infrastructure, manufacturing, scientific development, and communities that have been left behind after decades of neglect;
• Giving working families and the middle class the chance to get ahead by creating good jobs with family-sustaining wages and by supporting unions;
• Lowering costs and giving smaller businesses a fair chance to compete.
Over the last four years, we have made remarkable progress:
• Over 16 million jobs created-the most in a single presidential term in American hi story-with jobs created every single month;
• The lowest average unemployment rate of any administration in 50 years;
• A record 20 million new business applications;
• A doubling of union petitions;
• The smallest racial wealth gap in 20 years;
• More Americans with health insurance than ever before;
• The stock market at record highs and 401 (k)s up;
• More than $1 trillion in announced private sector investments in dean energy and advanced manufacturing in America;
• Lowering inflation while supporting a strong labor market-with inflation down faster and lower than almost any other advanced economy, and incomes up almost $4,000 more than prices.
To see all this in pictures — with links to The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, et al — click here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/economy/ Once Trump becomes President, he will rip down that page, but the National Archives will still have it, unless Trump attacks that, too.
https://www.archives.gov/presidential-records/research/archived-white-
house-websites
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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When you look around even a little bit, it's astonishing how good things are right now. I mean, take a look at this: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60706#_idTextAnchor017
The poorest group of Americans has an average household income of $56,000. The middle class is at $99,000.
Not obvious to Trumptards, but they are not sharing in the good times because they waste their time with their various addictions and, especially, their maladjusted behavior to America. Trump can’t fix that, despite Trumptards firmly believing the government caused their heartbreaking losses and sad lives.
https://jabberwocking.com/life-is-good-says-the-second-coming-of-cassa
ndra/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:(I don't mention the Ford Lightning, or not having been sick even once in the 21st Century, or my prosperous children/grandchildren/relatives who aren't Trumptards,
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Oh get fucked dude. Like you give a shit.
The one person you know who figured it all out is the one you're attacking all the time for it.
You would have free insurance right now if you didn't have to make an unfathomable amount of money to pay for all the shit you buy that you don't need. Yanno... like your shiny brand new Ford F150 Lightning you haven't talked about in over a year.
Stay on topic, stupid, or don't quote reply to me.
--------------------------------------------------
Trump is fine.
He is also your current President.
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
When you look around even a little bit, it's astonishing how good things are right now. I mean, take a look at this: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60706#_idTextAnchor017
The poorest group of Americans has an average household income of $56,000. The middle class is at $99,000.
Not obvious to Trumptards, but they are not sharing in the good times because they waste their time with their various addictions and, especially, their maladjusted behavior to America. Trump can’t fix that, despite Trumptards firmly believing the government caused their heartbreaking losses and sad lives.
https://jabberwocking.com/life-is-good-says-the-second-coming-of-cassa
ndra/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Ahhh...
Kevin and his fake graphs.
Also, from 2021, when Joe Biden* had only gotten started destroying the economy.
--------------------------------------------------
Trump is fine.
He is also your current President.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
It’s The Economy, Stupid
December 11, 2024
https://andrewtobias.com/its-the-economy-stupid-4/
Courtesy of the Biden White House:
After decades of trickle-down economics that slashed taxes for the wealthy, diminished public investments, offshored jobs and factories, destroyed unions, and ripped at the social safety net, President Biden has written a new playbook that’s growing the economy from the middle out and the bottom up . . .
... delivering the strongest recovery in the world, and laying a strong foundation
for years to come by:
• Investing in our infrastructure, manufacturing, scientific development, and communities that have been left behind after decades of neglect;
• Giving working families and the middle class the chance to get ahead by creating good jobs with family-sustaining wages and by supporting unions;
• Lowering costs and giving smaller businesses a fair chance to compete.
Over the last four years, we have made remarkable progress:
• Over 16 million jobs created-the most in a single presidential term in American hi story-with jobs created every single month;
• The lowest average unemployment rate of any administration in 50 years;
• A record 20 million new business applications;
• A doubling of union petitions;
• The smallest racial wealth gap in 20 years;
• More Americans with health insurance than ever before;
• The stock market at record highs and 401 (k)s up;
• More than $1 trillion in announced private sector investments in dean energy and advanced manufacturing in America;
• Lowering inflation while supporting a strong labor market-with inflation down faster and lower than almost any other advanced economy, and incomes up almost $4,000 more than prices.
To see all this in pictures — with links to The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, et al — click here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/economy/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
None of the above is true.
--------------------------------------------------
Trump is fine.
He is also your current President.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME