The Pitchforks Are Coming for Us Plutocrats (2014)
politico.com
politico.com
And in case anybody thinks of that "Stalin quote", it's actually by Kurt Tucholsky.
That said, I did see a comment on a NYTimes article that I thought was apt: it's a bit rich for Americans to now complain about how awful our healthcare system is when we just gave full control of government to the party that has rejected any healthcare reform for decades. I mean, this was the party that vilified false "death panels" in Obamacare, and now people are united in their anger about claim denials?? Obamacare is certainly not perfect (though one reason it was proposed is because Obama didn't think "Medicare for all" would be politically possible), but it's better than what existed before, and I have only seen Republicans try to tear it down consistently since it was passed and I've never heard them put forth any viable alternatives that would actually improve the situation.
The article does the same thing. It describes symptoms but never even comes close to a propper problem descrtiption or a true solution.
> My suggestion to you is: Let’s do it all over again. We’ve got to try something
> “The Capitalist’s Case for a $15 Minimum Wage.”
No! This is not a solution either.
The solution to inequality is not the capping of the lower bound (though, its a nice gesture) because the lower income already has a hard cap: zero.
The upper bound instead stays uncapped! Wealth or inequality is the relative span between the boundaries and this article proposes something like "why cant you guys down there be a little richer" while inflations contiunes to roll and home ownership continues declines. "But hey, arent you looking forward to get that 25$/h raise, when i tell you its time?" ... "Because, look how much you earn now. We certainly life in a more equal and just society." I dont like this limited way of thinking. Its effectively trickery with numbers.
> Many of us think we’re special because “this is America.”
I assume many rich and powerful tell to themselfs stories about societal problems, their solutions and how detached their way of life from them is.
Wealth redistibution has to start at the top and to be fair, there are some rich people advocating for more taxation/regulation, but they are heavily out spent by the other side. The author is definitely on the better side but still short sighted.
It is because, like other issues, they do not want to solve the problem. But they cannot just come out and say that.
The "both sides" argument isn't entirely true, but it isn't untrue either.
Obviously, when speaking in generalities, this always just turns into a Rorschach test online, so won't enter into that debate.
But when looking at Obamacare/ACA specifically, I think its mere existence would disprove the point you are trying to make. Obama and the Dems put a ton of political capital into trying to actually do something about healthcare in the US. And, again, to the point that it's quite rich for Americans to bitch about the state of healthcare now, the Democrats got pretty destroyed in the 2010 Congressional elections specifically because of Obamacare. As stated above, Obamacare is not perfect, but it drastically reduced the percentage of uninsured Americans. Sorry, but I think any attempt to "both sides" on this specific issue is complete nonsense, and the historical record shows that.
Very open to considering any reasonable attempts at all by the Republican party as a whole or even any individual Republican states to improve healthcare or lower the cost of it in this country in the past 20 years. I am just not aware of any.
then on Election Day the biggest google search was “is Joe Biden not running for reelection ?”
this is the freedumb that the right-wing thinktanks have been planning for decades
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/unitedhealthcare-ceo...
> “I don’t believe there’s any justification for murder,” she says. “I think it sets a terrible precedent, and logically I know that a society that functions this way is doomed to collapse. Yet I still couldn’t temper my emotional reaction. I did feel a little bit of satisfaction.”
According to OpenSecrets, UnitedHealth Group has spent $5,860,000 lobbying in 2024.
So yeah, fuck that guy.
Sure, a few malcontents might get angry and try shooting at someone. It only takes one angry person to pull off a successful assassination, as we just saw in NYC. A couple of other angry people shot at Trump on the campaign trail. But that wasn't related to his popularity, since he won overwhelmingly in the election afterwards.
I suppose the rich people are probably going to need to hire more bodyguards, so this might be a good time to buy stock in a security company.
And other things. The B part is the least worrying.
American healthcare is like this. Your doctor wants to give you some treatment, some other person decides how much it costs, then insurance, who you paid ahead of time, who you are legally required to have, who has never and will never see you, decides that it’s too expensive to pay out. Even though that’s what insurance is for. They get rich off of this; you suffer.
Truly "paying cash" for routine care would be difficult as most doctor's offices have no idea how to quote a cash price for services, unless you go to one of the very few cash-based practices.
Sounds like some positive outcomes already.
a) The surgeons just stop the procedure early and close you up
b) They continue but send the anaesthesiologist home, or
c) They continue but you wake up to a massive surprise bill that you need to pay out of pocket?
The least expensive general anesthesia surgeries I can find already greatly exceed the out-of-pocket annual maximums for ACA market insurance plans (which have worse out-of-pocket maximums than the employment-based insurance plans most people have). You are not paying the money Anthem was trying to get anesthesiologists to stop overcharging!
This is a dispute between two giant corporations, and people are inexplicably (and literally murderously) taking the side of the one that is making more money, and is resisting Medicare's guidelines.
I'm not kidding: the messaging heist anesthesiologist trade groups pulled off here is unreal. They're some of the highest-paid specialists in the entire profession, and people are literally talking about giving their lives to protect their right to overbill you.
* This is not money you were ever going to pay.
* There is no such thing as cutting anesthesia off early because of a billing dispute.
You are getting rolled by a professional trade group for some of the most highly compensated, well-off people in the American economy. We might just as well take up arms against the rapacious costs of M&A litigation in the finance industry.
I don't see why. Don't out-of-pocket maximums only apply to covered care?
d) Stop the anaesthesia and continue the procedure with you regaining consciousness.
Again: this is a dispute about bills patients don't pay. The most routine imaginable surgeries --- appendectomies, laparoscopic gall bladder removals --- all have average costs that greatly exceed average out-of-pocket caps for insurance.
Now if what we need is to deal with a rash of insurance fraud, insurers are more than welcome to hire people to sit in on the theater to gain more representative data. But let's be real here. Insurance is more interested in improving their take home spreadwise rather than improving patient outcomes.
And I beg to differ it doesn't happen. I remember quite vividly my wisdom teeth being extracted. I was just under threshold for being able to do anything about it, but awake and aware for the entire thing. Anaesthesia is not something to screw around with.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42336090.
What billionaires own today is essentially a piece of a giant debt-based economic sugar puff.
UBI is a way to replace the debt vacuum with money. You've got to put cream in that sugar puff so that it holds its shape.
Else the debt in our debt-based system will soon suck all the air out and it will collapse on itself.
Watch "Hidden secrets of money" - There is a segment in there which explains money creation and how there is always more debt in the system than there is money available to repay it.
$15 per hour is a competitive rate for the middle class and more than most professional accountants I know.
If there is a systemic problem, it is almost certainly either living standards in the absolute or the rate of change of living standards. If my living standards are consistently improving I really don't care about anyone else and I suspect more people work that way than admit to it.
Duh? 25 year olds today cannot afford the house their parents had at 25.
There seems to be a belief among some on HN that the prior generations went from college to law school to partnership track in a white-shoe law firm. Some did, and a knew a couple of them. Most of us didn't.
Of course it is. Look at someone like Musk. Because he is VERY well off hey could literally buy an election, and before that he bought the biggest social media platform and turned it into a right-wing propaganda site.
Oh, well then you must be right.
> If my living standards are consistently improving I really don't care about anyone else
And if they are not?
This leads to politicians and policies that mostly bend to the wealthy investor class instead of the working class.
The working class feels (correctly) that they aren’t being well represented.
The wealth inequality in isolation may not be a huge problem, but there are many second and third order effects of this. We aren’t just talking about “own a mansion” wealthy, we’re talking about “buy an election” and “prevent reasonable healthcare reform” wealth and power.
most people don't really care that some others are "very well off"... people care that corporations have become a massive part of the citizen's everyday lives and wellbeing, but corporations' only responsibility is to maximize profits for shareholders, and when the food is poison and the healthcare is unusable and there are greedy humans running those companies, THAT is what is pissing people off