Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

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I don't know, if you look at public health consumption expenditures per capita, current prices, current PPPs, 2015-2024, US is up there. It's mostly medicaid and medicare. You might not like how the money is being spent but the idea that US doesn't spend money on these things compared to other Western countries is just not true.

Same with education

> In 2019, the United States spent $15,500 per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student on elementary and secondary education, which was 38 percent higher than the average of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries of $11,300 (in constant 2021 U.S. dollars). At the postsecondary level, the United States spent $37,400 per FTE student, which was more than double the average of OECD countries ($18,400; in constant 2021 U.S. dollars).

I get that it's cool to say US doesn't spend on these kinds of things, but it's just not true. It's a rich country

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...

It’s spending. Comparatively? Not sure. Health and education are wildly more expensive in the US as compared to other countries). Are US citizens getting similar/better outcomes? What is the comparison between exported/imported jobs and health care between countries?

The US spends more on health and education than developed countries and gets significantly worse outcomes.

There is no world where the way it is done now is “good”.

True, but I don't think grandparent commenter claimed it was “good” - instead, I think they were replying to the claim that the US won’t or refuses to spend money on those things.

So the US doesn’t spend the money, and it doesn’t provide services to its citizens.

The citizens themselves have to pay from their own pocket, and they get substandard services because the whole thing is setup to maximize profits for private companies.

> So the US doesn’t spend the money, and it doesn’t provide services to its citizens. The citizens themselves have to pay from their own pocket

The three examples in bko's grandparent comment you'd replied to were education, medicaid, and medicare.

So it spends more than other countries, but gets worse results?

… that’s not a flex.

I read bko’s comment as merely pointing out that the claim that the US doesn't spend money on those things was untrue.

> that's not a flex

Was there something about bko’s comment that made you believe they thought it was a “flex”? (I'd similarly say the US spends a lot but doesn’t get good results.)

I think tech workers just often don't realize nearly half of the country is eligible for either Medicare or Medicaid and that we're just part of the class of sub-human subjects who get taxed into oblivion for transfer payments for almost half of everyone else but ourselves and on top of that have to pay (directly on indirectly through employment) for sky-high insurance rates that the medicare demographic disproportionately voted for policies that imposed such high rates on us.

Your insurance system is a scam, but socialized health care is preferable to the alternatives.

I think there has to be at least some level of tolerance for venting when you step out of work, walk up the street to the grocery store for a bite to eat. And on the street are drug addicts trying to sell you their food stamp card, which also means they are eligible for Medicaid, and meanwhile when your own family needs healthcare no one gives a flying fuck and you are on your own but by god you better pay taxes for half of everyone else to get that healthcare. All from personal experience. The message is if you contribute to society then you are left to die of whatever ailments you might get while being forced to cover half of everyone else's, but otherwise society will take care of your health if you choose to seek healthcare.

Regardless of your stance on single payer healthcare, anyone can see what we have is a highly corrupt and contemptable system and what I am receiving is not "socialized" health care.

No, that's not socialised healthcare. If it were socialised it would be for everyone. Like here.

What you have there is profit maximisation. The poor guys can't afford healthcare anyway so they give it to them for free but you're still scraping by to fill the big guys pockets. Because you can.

But don't blame socialism for it because this is none of that.

Somehow I'm paradoxically blaming socialism while also being acknowledged the thing I'm blaming isn't socialism and I explicitly said what I was getting was not that.

And this is why it's so hard to discuss, because you are always damned either way by someone declaring that whatever you were talking about was in the other half of it's Schrödinger's socialism state at whatever moment you were talking about it.

You're right you did say that, sorry. I overlooked that.

To be honest I'm a bit primed by the (mostly) republicans always attacking our welfare safety net, our healthcare, our kindness to immigrants etc. Even our lack of exploitative ultra-capitalism. Whereas for us these things work well. So I jumped to the defensive too quickly.

And then they spit on us anyway. Part of me wants to just CoastFI and take a lower paying job in spite.

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