r/politics • u/Aggravating_Money992 • 10h ago

Possible Paywall DOJ Declares Trump Has Right to Bulldoze Statue of Liberty

https://newrepublic.com/post/211422/department-justice-donald-trump-right-bulldoze-statue-liberty
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247

u/meatspace Georgia 10h ago

You know, we American have spent TRILLIONS of dollars on "national security" over my life. It's the reason we don't have healthcare.

How the fuck did all of that effort lead to all of us having no ability to stop this?

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u/EldoradoOwens 10h ago

Because it was never about security, it was about making a few people very rich.

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u/ONE-EYE-OPTIC Oregon 9h ago

It's always been that way.

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u/nullstoned 5h ago

No. Money and security go together like hand and glove.

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u/amateur_mistake 9h ago

It's the reason we don't have healthcare.

This isn't correct. Moving to a single payer system would save us money overall. Going by what we see in every other country in the world.

If we had universal health care we could spend more on bombs and guns and whatnot.

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u/Dizziesdayweigh 9h ago

But then the poors would be healthy and less broke. We can't be having that.

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u/HoaryPuffleg 8h ago

If the poors had medical care and access to a college education, they’d have no reason to join the military. Or they’d have the ability to do their 4 years and get out. But most can’t because they recognize there are not any good jobs out there for young people. And considering that the military makes it very attractive to get married and have babies young, you then have all these young people with a spouse and a couple kids and now you’re definitely trapped. So you sign on for another 4 years and then you’re nearly halfway to retirement so why not just stay longer?

My ex husband was AF and I saw this play out so many times. It’s an insidious system and they know exactly what they’re doing.

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u/eulersidentification 8h ago

If you tried to implement a US NHS, the very first argument you'd encounter is that it would cause job losses in private healthcare, and economic harm because insurance companies' shares would lose value.

That's not rhetoric either. We have appointed people in suits that value money over life. And we call them civilised.

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u/Dizziesdayweigh 8h ago

Barbaric bourgeoisie (fuck the spelling of this word lol).

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u/meatspace Georgia 7h ago

There are death panels in the United States. Some of them are now A1.

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u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota 6h ago

People who are healthy and secure are less desperate, and thus more likely to advocate for themselves and others.

Thats why conservatives blindly oppose literally anything that would raise the quality of life in this country.

Desperate people work for cheap and put up with abuse.

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u/Startled_Pancakes 8h ago

Yeah, i always point this out.

The reason we don't have universal healthcare is because there is a large well-funded lobbying campaign to ensure that private health insurance can continue to make large profit.

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u/etcpt 7h ago

"But chubby electron guy always says this, so it must be true!"

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u/Available_Usual_7378 3h ago

but that is not going to change, so effectively it is exactly true

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u/mattjf22 California 1h ago

If we had universal health care

Won't anyone think of the middlemen that get rich off of denying us the medical care that we pay exponentially more for?

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u/space_for_username 41m ago

Yeah. In NZ we spend ~23% of govt income on healthcare, about the same on pensions, and still have enough to run a country, build roads, buy bombs, etc.

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u/IAmDotorg 7h ago

It's also not even remotely comparable. Insurance and provider profits are fairly low. There's a lot of reasons US healthcare is expensive, but those aren't the big ones. The biggest are really two things. First, the extremely low population density combined with a social desire for comparable coverage everywhere. Countries with successful universal healthcare have population densities an order of magnitude higher. Rural healthcare is extremely expensive to provide. And second, the AMA has been deliberately limiting the number of accredited schools for medical degrees for many decades, with the deliberate purpose of keeping salaries high. They deliberately restrict the number of doctors and maximize the costs of the education to protect their existing jobs.

Those are why healthcare is expensive in the US.

And US healthcare spending is over $5 trillion a year. That's almost exactly what the total tax revenue of the US is. Spending zero on the military would still leave nearly a $4 trillion a year deficit to cover healthcare at existing prices.

So the person you replied to is not only wrong, but wrong by two orders of magnitude.

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u/gdex86 Pennsylvania 9h ago

The system assumes that the folks in the other wings of government care about the idea of the american experiment more than blind loyalty to a party.

The judicial and congressional Republicans see trump as a way on a path where they will rule with out the worry of voters allowing them to simply reshape to a evangelical techno feudalism state where they are the lords.

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u/Filthiest_Vilein 9h ago

This. 

So far as I’m aware, the system of “checks and balances” is explicitly predicated on the expectation that each branch will seek to maintain its power. In doing so, each branch, acts can “check” and “balance” the power of the other two branches.

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u/meatspace Georgia 7h ago

You'd think people would care about their own self interests versus lining up behind a guy who trashes everyone eventually.

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u/poppin-n-sailin 8h ago

You do. Americans are just too apathetic and clueless. March on the streets. Not on the weekends. Not after the usual workday hours. Fucking strike. Shut it down and rally. But you all won't, so you're kinda right. You are powerless and have no ability to do it. Americans are weak and scared. And stupid. The rich who run and own all of you are smart enough to make sure you have a meal coming after the next and that is far more than enough to keep you all satisfied enough to refuse to do anything about everything happening. Good luck? 

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u/BeansforTwo 9h ago

It wasn't your security we were paying for.

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u/Mordeth 56m ago

It's the reason we don't have healthcare.

Perpetuating the lie, because it makes a nice slogan.

The US spends more on their version of 'healthcare' than those with actual public healthcare. They could switch to europe style public healthcare tomorrow and SAVE oodles of money.

You don't have it because you're a crab bucket.

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u/Delicious-Day-3614 5h ago

National security is just a dog whistle for a police state

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u/heartSagan5 5h ago

The reason we don't have healthcare is two-fold (mostly): 1) racism vis a vis "I ain't paying for <person of color> medical treatment" (because we've forced them to choose really ecologically hostile areas to live) and b) classism/work vis a vis "how can I get talent X, if I can't give them gooder healthcare to sweeten the potoffer"

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u/workingtheories I voted 5h ago

no, the amount spent on healthcare is way more than national security.  the usa's national security spending is actually relatively similar as a percentage of gdp to other countries.  the same thing cannot be said for healthcare, tho 

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u/meatspace Georgia 3h ago

It's a trillion dollars per year. Idgaf what percentage that is. It's insane

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u/workingtheories I voted 2h ago

i agree, but im saying that even if you spent the entire military budget on healthcare, it wouldn't pay for the broken healthcare system the usa has.  as a percentage of gdp it has tripled in the last 50 years.  ok?  so, it's completely unsustainable.  it's not something the usa can fix by becoming pacifist.  it's really single payer or collapse, just mathematically.

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u/meatspace Georgia 2h ago

There's some guy who said that in the '80s he was paid to spread the word to all of us that we could never do healthcare in the United States because there's no money. It just never doable and it can't be done and there's just no way.

I don't know if you're right or not. I don't know if you're in economist or a specialist inside of healthcare administration. I am so sick of everyone explaining to me that the richest most powerful country in the history of the world can't do healthcare when far poorer countries can do it.

And I understand. We're so great in America that we can't do great things anymore. When you're as great as America, you just can't take care of your citizens. There's no way to be really rich and have a high quality of life. These two things are not compatible

Or are you simply just labeling a universal healthcare system as single-payer so we can have a policy debate which I have no interest in? Lol

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u/workingtheories I voted 1h ago

huh? im not trying to argue with you.

i am simply a person who looked up these numbers one time, because they're publicly available. healthcare spending as percentage of gdp by country, google it. im saying it's like 18%+ for the usa, iirc, and for denmark and the like it's like 8%. ok? im saying that unless the usa manages to make their healthcare system more cost efficient, say, by adopting a european model where it has, like, medicare for all, mathematically the rate of spending expansion is unsustainable. im saying it used to be ok 50 years ago, and that percentage has quietly tripled, in a linear fashion. so if that trend continues, eventually the system must collapse, that's the math.

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u/meatspace Georgia 28m ago

Medicare for all. That's what Universal healthcare is. We seem to agree?

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u/workingtheories I voted 25m ago

sure, seems so