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Comment by bfrog | Hacker News Reader

This only works even remotely if the politicians agree to work together on some level. Modern US politics went all in on Newt Gingrich’s blockade method to ensure the big bad democrats can’t look like they ever do anything.

And here we are with only slightly less broken healthcare with the ACA, a plan originally from GOP, which is constantly hounded on for being terrible. All while drug and medical prices fleece every dollar from every pocket.

So this is what it comes back to when congress can’t do their job of helping the American people or balancing the budget. A populist comes in and smashes the norms.

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> A populist comes in and smashes the norms.

And who favors the rich. You have to give Republicans credit, they are skilled at getting the poor to comprehensively screw themselves.

I've come to the conclusion that some people must see success as holding someone else down as opposed to raising yourself up. The poor people you're talking about don't see it as screwing themselves as long as they can recognize that some other group is more screwed.

I think there is a lot of people who just look up to rich people, no matter what. There is a strong cult of personality around Trump and Musk.

One of the interesting things is watching my upvote count change in this discussion. It reliably goes up during EU time and then goes back down during US time. It's amazing.

Reminds me of: "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

John Steinbeck

Everyone reading this should research the end of life healthcare situation in the US. In the current system you will be destitute, your assets will be sucked dry until you have nothing, only then will you qualify for Medicaid. Only the wealthy can die with assets to pass on. We are currently experiencing this with our parents. The system is set up so social security pays just enough to not qualify for Medicaid and Medicare doesn’t cover what they need (assisted living or home healthcare).

It's funny how that works out. Welp, let's have a look at how that stock market is doing....oh look, more GDP growth, everything is hunky dory.

I think it's very enlightening when you recognize that every single place the US has been involved with setting up a new government we NEVER try to give them anything like our own system because it's so broken. Between the non representative Senate where one senator can block 59 others with no action (bring back the days when they had to actually filibuster a filibuster! Make it at least cost something to do.). And the mismatch between Congress and the Executive meaning barely anything gets done in the last couple decades for fear of actually giving you opponents a win at the cost of complete stagnation... It's a poorly designed system hacked together centuries ago to wrangle 13 barely united colonies.

We’ve been hearing for decades now that congress is hamstrung because “one side” refuses to cooperate. And yet, apparently when it comes to things like banning tik-tok, or renewing the various PATRIOT ACT provisions, they can get it done with barely a quibble.

Almost all of congress’ problems are of their own making. At what point do we stop accepting the excuse from half of congress that their hands are completely tied and start holding them accountable for fixing it.

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