7 ms·

Then move if you don't like a social government... You do understand that USA rich people living of the life's of the poor? No proper health care etc for peop

Then move if you don't like a social government... You do understand that USA rich people living of the life's of the poor? No proper health care etc for people cleaning their flats or flipping their burgers...

swamp40 3y ago
Not true at all. In fact the poorer you are, the better health care you get - all free. It's the middle class who get crushed in America. $2000/mo insurance with $5K deductibles for a family of 4.
- strongpigeon 3y ago
  People are often unaware of this. I was really surprised to learn that my health insurance was completely free in WA (Apple Health/Medicaid) when I quit my job. Health insurance affordability is really U shaped as you're implying and that chasm can be hard to cross.
arp242 3y ago
This is really a different issue; tech salaries in parts of the US really are substantially higher, and that has fairly little to do with the differences in government policies in the areas you mentioned.
choeger 3y ago
In Germany, it's not the social system per se but it's aoparent utter ineffectiveness. We're paying more and more every year but the state/public system seems to fail everywhere and worse so than the year before. It's like the money is completely sucked up by some unproductive black hole. And no, it's not because of reduced taxation from rich to working class, or missing taxes on property or some other policy. These policies didn't change that much in the last decade or two. Yet throughout the last decade the state and social security systems had record income, record levels of employment and managed to run down pretty much every part of the public system from education, over healthcare to defense. The money just vanished. I am very much convinced that Germany as a whole doesn't have an income problem, but a spending problem.
- M3L0NM4N 3y ago
  That is, in my opinion, by far the strongest argument for lower taxes. The money we (the US) do spend in education/healthcare/infrastructure is already poorly utilized, why would we want to spend more and end up like that? To simplify it dramatically with an example, I'd rather pay $3 on the toll road and $50k for a surgery myself than pay $10 in taxes towards the road and $100k in taxes towards the healthcare system but receive both of them for "free". I understand the advantages of a social safety net, I do. But misappropriation of someone's hard-earned money is frustrating as well.
  - mullingitover 3y ago
    Private companies can certainly hold their own when it comes to waste and incompetence. Government doesn’t have a monopoly on these things.
    - missedthecue 3y ago
      If a private company wastes too much, it eventually goes out of business. If a government entity wastes too much money, their budget is increased for the next fiscal year. There is no feedback loop to govern the waste.
    - dantheman 3y ago
      Clearly you've never worked in the government.
      - mullingitover 3y ago
        No, but both my parents spent their careers working in the VA system, which routinely trounces private health care in measures of efficiency.
    - vladvasiliu 3y ago
      Companies certainly can be wasteful and incompetent. But at least they won't put you in prison if you decide not to buy their product.
inotherwords1 3y ago
[flagged]
- Demoloto 3y ago
  His responsibility? Due to moral and ethics of course. I can't go to a burger flipper restaurant without a bad feeling if I know that the person working behind the counter is basically a modern slave and also works 40h but doesn't have any rights at all. It's hard for me to say 'i want worker rights' and ignore everyone around me. And as a backup mechanism: guess what? It can happen to you. But also your family or friends might be in the position. So it is also beneficial to fight for this for your friends and family. It's the same shit with equal pay: I would have less strss if my wife would earn similar to me so I don't have the pressure to always work in my job to make it for my family. And yes we're is your proudness for your country when you know there are people who can't afford going to the dentist and have to wait for a year with a rotten teeth to get it fixed 3h away in a sports gym because there is the once in a year free dental service event? Proud American ey?
  - nivenkos 3y ago
    But those jobs should be automated so no-one has to do them. And that process should be supported by a high minimum wage - hitting the employers, not taxing productive work to provide tax credits to subsidise such terrible jobs. Automation leads to more high-tech jobs and investment, and higher productivity, which leads to higher wages as companies compete for highly skilled employees, etc. Economic mobility and productivity is the key to prosperity. > And yes we're is your proudness for your country when you know there are people who can't afford going to the dentist and have to wait for a year with a rotten teeth to get it fixed 3h away in a sports gym because there is the once in a year free dental service event? This is sadly the same in Europe, as dentistry mostly isn't covered under public healthcare in the UK and Sweden for example. So we pay almost 50% tax just to be in the same position! But I support universal healthcare (including dentistry and opticians), it's a critical part of economic mobility. People can't move jobs or take risks if they'll lose healthcare coverage.
    - 3y ago
batmansmk 3y ago
Average salary in SV is 115k, 22k in France. USA live off its neo-colonial digital empire, not through the exploitation of blue collars. When any digital company out there pay 30% of what they earn in tarifs on cloud, ads, servers, licenses, app revenue, patent litigation, …
- Demoloto 3y ago
  Let's agree to say 'and'.
- hef19898 3y ago
  So, you compare the averge of France, a cpuntey not known for high salaries, as a cpuntey to one of the highest paid regions in the world? SV =|= blue collar, the rust belt and Detroit are blue collar.
  - batmansmk 3y ago
    You change to median in the whole USA and median in the whole Europe then? Still the same conclusion. SV tech engineers arent rich because someone's is flipping their burgers. Someone is flipping an engineer's burger in France, in Detroit, In Tehran. So blue collar exploitation exists everywhere and cannot explain the outrageous salaries in SV.
  - RestlessMind 3y ago
    Ok let's do a fairer comparison. Avg annual income across EU was 33,500 Euro in 2022[1]. For the USA, that was 60,500USD [2] [1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20221219-3 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d... [2] https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/average-salary-in-us/ https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/average-salary-in-us/
    - hef19898 3y ago
      And yet you do not hear of normal people in the EU going bancrupt over medical expenses or not taking an ambulance because they cannot afford it. Funny, isn't it?
dantheman 3y ago
What are you talking about? The US has one of the most progressive tax systems, and like 50% of people don't even pay income tax. The government wastes money and the medical establishment is corrupt -- but that has nothing to do with rich people living off of the poor. The poor in America are far richer than the poor in most other countries.
- virtualritz 3y ago
  > The poor in America are far richer than the poor in most other countries. You probably mean the US/Canada. 'America' includes South America for which this is not generally true. However, replace 'America' in your sentence with any developed country and the statement is indeed generally true. And thusly of little value to this discussion. Specifically it doesn't change the fact that the poor in the US are much poorer that the poor in most (possibly all?) developed countries. [1] And I do not mean this solely in the sense of pure numbers as in e.g. [2]. But rather what it means to be poor. I.e. how dignified or undignified a life do the social support systems of a country and the view of the resp. society on the poor allow you to live, should you fall in that bracket? [1] https://confrontingpoverty.org/poverty-facts-and-myths/americas-poor-are-worse-off-than-elsewhere/ https://confrontingpoverty.org/poverty-facts-and-myths/ameri... [2] https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-gap.htm#indicator-chart https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-gap.htm#indicator-c...
  - dfee 3y ago
    > You probably mean the US/Canada. 'America' includes South America for which this is not generally true. Whether you like the colloquial usage or not doesn’t change its colloquial usage nor (on review) one of it’s formal definitions. Curious why this is a crusade you’ve joined, though.
  - RestlessMind 3y ago
    > the poor in the US are much poorer that the poor in most (possibly all?) developed countries. My source[1] disagrees with your source. It seems fairly close to Italy/Spain and slightly better than the much vaunted place on HN (Japan). [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/233910/poverty-rates-in-oecd-countries/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/233910/poverty-rates-in-...
nivenkos 3y ago
I'd love to move, but getting a green card is a nightmare. I don't want to work for 5 years trapped with one employer and facing deportation with a matter of weeks if I lose my job, on an L-1 visa (and to do that I'd still have to find a position to move to in my company).
- Demoloto 3y ago
  Ohh really? What a surprise suddenly the risk is not worth it.... Quite a weak excuse though.
umrcumrcu 3y ago
[flagged]
gfdsgfsdgfs 3y ago
"No proper health care etc for people cleaning their flats or flipping their burgers..." Almost $1 trillion was spent on Medicaid last year. What are you talking about?
- Arainach 3y ago
  Eligiblity for Medicaid is limited, and many important groups are "optional" which essentially means "no, if Republicans control any branch of your state government".
  - mariojv 3y ago
    Yes. In Texas, you need to be pregnant, have a child under age 18, blind, disabled, or over 65 to qualify, in addition to the income requirements: https://www.benefits.gov/benefit/1640%7D https://www.benefits.gov/benefit/1640%7D
mattpallissard 3y ago
America has always been a make it or break it place with most people not making it. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just pointing out that has been our schtick for hundreds of years. It's the land of opportunity, not the land of guarantee.
- prottog 3y ago
  > It's the land of opportunity, not the land of guarantee Absolutely. > most people not making it By any metric, there's at most a handful of countries where the median person is as well off as in the US. I struggle to say that most people aren't making it here; or if they really aren't, then not making it in America is better than making it in most other places.
RestlessMind 3y ago
> No proper health care etc for people cleaning their flats or flipping their burgers... That seems FUD. There are safety nets like Medicaid, Obamacare subsidies and EMTALA for poor.
- 542458 3y ago
  41% of U.S. citizens carry some sort of medical debt, and 24% are considering bankruptcy to solve a medical debt issue. https://www.debt.org/bankruptcy/statistics/ https://www.debt.org/bankruptcy/statistics/
  - iancmceachern 3y ago
    Thank you for posting this. This is both staggering, and also highly informative. It's clear this is crushing the US middle and lower classes. I've seen a recent trend in churches, where they use their excess funds to buy people's medical debt out of collections and forgive it. It's the best thing I've heard in a long time. I also have been recently battling with Blue Shield of California (but they're all bad). They were denying me my medicine, in a similar way that Cigna was proven to deny claims by ProPublica recently. I also found out that a few years ago Blue Shield of California was stripped of its non profit tax benefits because it had billions in surplus that it was just sitting on, you know, making profit. Since then they seem to be spending money to out their names on things like opera houses in SF and advertising, but not putting it to work in the community to make real impact. I propose we create a movement that demands that insurance companies use their excess profit, etc. to buy people's medical debt and free them of it. How do we get this movement going? Blue Shield of California alone has hundreds of millions a year in surplus, that would buy out billions of dollars in medical debt for people and completely change many people's lives for the better.
    - prottog 3y ago
      > I propose we create a movement that demands that insurance companies use their excess profit, etc. to buy people's medical debt and free them of it. How do we get this movement going? Blue Shield of California alone has hundreds of millions a year in surplus, that would buy out billions of dollars in medical debt for people and completely change many people's lives for the better. Blue Shield of California had a net loss of almost a billion dollars in 2022[0]. Should they do the reverse in that case and put their excess loss by putting more people in medical debt? [0]: https://www.blueshieldca.com/en/home/about-blue-shield/corporate-information/financials https://www.blueshieldca.com/en/home/about-blue-shield/corpo...
trollerator23 3y ago
[flagged]
- hef19898 3y ago
  And people cannot be both, hackers and having a social conscience?
dang 3y ago
Please don't take HN threads into generic ideological (or, god help us, nationalistic) flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35899436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35899436.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

swamp40 3y ago

Not true at all. In fact the poorer you are, the better health care you get - all free. It's the middle class who get crushed in America. $2000/mo insurance with $5K deductibles for a family of 4.

strongpigeon 3y ago
People are often unaware of this. I was really surprised to learn that my health insurance was completely free in WA (Apple Health/Medicaid) when I quit my job. Health insurance affordability is really U shaped as you're implying and that chasm can be hard to cross.

arp242 3y ago

This is really a different issue; tech salaries in parts of the US really are substantially higher, and that has fairly little to do with the differences in government policies in the areas you mentioned.

choeger 3y ago

In Germany, it's not the social system per se but it's aoparent utter ineffectiveness. We're paying more and more every year but the state/public system seems to fail everywhere and worse so than the year before. It's like the money is completely sucked up by some unproductive black hole. And no, it's not because of reduced taxation from rich to working class, or missing taxes on property or some other policy. These policies didn't change that much in the last decade or two. Yet throughout the last decade the state and social security systems had record income, record levels of employment and managed to run down pretty much every part of the public system from education, over healthcare to defense. The money just vanished. I am very much convinced that Germany as a whole doesn't have an income problem, but a spending problem.

M3L0NM4N 3y ago
That is, in my opinion, by far the strongest argument for lower taxes. The money we (the US) do spend in education/healthcare/infrastructure is already poorly utilized, why would we want to spend more and end up like that? To simplify it dramatically with an example, I'd rather pay $3 on the toll road and $50k for a surgery myself than pay $10 in taxes towards the road and $100k in taxes towards the healthcare system but receive both of them for "free". I understand the advantages of a social safety net, I do. But misappropriation of someone's hard-earned money is frustrating as well.
- mullingitover 3y ago
  Private companies can certainly hold their own when it comes to waste and incompetence. Government doesn’t have a monopoly on these things.
  - missedthecue 3y ago
    If a private company wastes too much, it eventually goes out of business. If a government entity wastes too much money, their budget is increased for the next fiscal year. There is no feedback loop to govern the waste.
  - dantheman 3y ago
    Clearly you've never worked in the government.
    - mullingitover 3y ago
      No, but both my parents spent their careers working in the VA system, which routinely trounces private health care in measures of efficiency.
  - vladvasiliu 3y ago
    Companies certainly can be wasteful and incompetent. But at least they won't put you in prison if you decide not to buy their product.

inotherwords1 3y ago

[flagged]

Demoloto 3y ago
His responsibility? Due to moral and ethics of course. I can't go to a burger flipper restaurant without a bad feeling if I know that the person working behind the counter is basically a modern slave and also works 40h but doesn't have any rights at all. It's hard for me to say 'i want worker rights' and ignore everyone around me. And as a backup mechanism: guess what? It can happen to you. But also your family or friends might be in the position. So it is also beneficial to fight for this for your friends and family. It's the same shit with equal pay: I would have less strss if my wife would earn similar to me so I don't have the pressure to always work in my job to make it for my family. And yes we're is your proudness for your country when you know there are people who can't afford going to the dentist and have to wait for a year with a rotten teeth to get it fixed 3h away in a sports gym because there is the once in a year free dental service event? Proud American ey?
- nivenkos 3y ago
  But those jobs should be automated so no-one has to do them. And that process should be supported by a high minimum wage - hitting the employers, not taxing productive work to provide tax credits to subsidise such terrible jobs. Automation leads to more high-tech jobs and investment, and higher productivity, which leads to higher wages as companies compete for highly skilled employees, etc. Economic mobility and productivity is the key to prosperity. > And yes we're is your proudness for your country when you know there are people who can't afford going to the dentist and have to wait for a year with a rotten teeth to get it fixed 3h away in a sports gym because there is the once in a year free dental service event? This is sadly the same in Europe, as dentistry mostly isn't covered under public healthcare in the UK and Sweden for example. So we pay almost 50% tax just to be in the same position! But I support universal healthcare (including dentistry and opticians), it's a critical part of economic mobility. People can't move jobs or take risks if they'll lose healthcare coverage.
  - 3y ago

batmansmk 3y ago

Average salary in SV is 115k, 22k in France. USA live off its neo-colonial digital empire, not through the exploitation of blue collars. When any digital company out there pay 30% of what they earn in tarifs on cloud, ads, servers, licenses, app revenue, patent litigation, …

Demoloto 3y ago
Let's agree to say 'and'.
hef19898 3y ago
So, you compare the averge of France, a cpuntey not known for high salaries, as a cpuntey to one of the highest paid regions in the world? SV =|= blue collar, the rust belt and Detroit are blue collar.
- batmansmk 3y ago
  You change to median in the whole USA and median in the whole Europe then? Still the same conclusion. SV tech engineers arent rich because someone's is flipping their burgers. Someone is flipping an engineer's burger in France, in Detroit, In Tehran. So blue collar exploitation exists everywhere and cannot explain the outrageous salaries in SV.
- RestlessMind 3y ago
  Ok let's do a fairer comparison. Avg annual income across EU was 33,500 Euro in 2022[1]. For the USA, that was 60,500USD [2] [1] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20221219-3 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d... [2] https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/average-salary-in-us/ https://www.sofi.com/learn/content/average-salary-in-us/
  - hef19898 3y ago
    And yet you do not hear of normal people in the EU going bancrupt over medical expenses or not taking an ambulance because they cannot afford it. Funny, isn't it?

dantheman 3y ago

What are you talking about? The US has one of the most progressive tax systems, and like 50% of people don't even pay income tax. The government wastes money and the medical establishment is corrupt -- but that has nothing to do with rich people living off of the poor. The poor in America are far richer than the poor in most other countries.

virtualritz 3y ago
> The poor in America are far richer than the poor in most other countries. You probably mean the US/Canada. 'America' includes South America for which this is not generally true. However, replace 'America' in your sentence with any developed country and the statement is indeed generally true. And thusly of little value to this discussion. Specifically it doesn't change the fact that the poor in the US are much poorer that the poor in most (possibly all?) developed countries. [1] And I do not mean this solely in the sense of pure numbers as in e.g. [2]. But rather what it means to be poor. I.e. how dignified or undignified a life do the social support systems of a country and the view of the resp. society on the poor allow you to live, should you fall in that bracket? [1] https://confrontingpoverty.org/poverty-facts-and-myths/americas-poor-are-worse-off-than-elsewhere/ https://confrontingpoverty.org/poverty-facts-and-myths/ameri... [2] https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-gap.htm#indicator-chart https://data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-gap.htm#indicator-c...
- dfee 3y ago
  > You probably mean the US/Canada. 'America' includes South America for which this is not generally true. Whether you like the colloquial usage or not doesn’t change its colloquial usage nor (on review) one of it’s formal definitions. Curious why this is a crusade you’ve joined, though.
- RestlessMind 3y ago
  > the poor in the US are much poorer that the poor in most (possibly all?) developed countries. My source[1] disagrees with your source. It seems fairly close to Italy/Spain and slightly better than the much vaunted place on HN (Japan). [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/233910/poverty-rates-in-oecd-countries/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/233910/poverty-rates-in-...

nivenkos 3y ago

I'd love to move, but getting a green card is a nightmare. I don't want to work for 5 years trapped with one employer and facing deportation with a matter of weeks if I lose my job, on an L-1 visa (and to do that I'd still have to find a position to move to in my company).

Demoloto 3y ago
Ohh really? What a surprise suddenly the risk is not worth it.... Quite a weak excuse though.

umrcumrcu 3y ago

[flagged]

gfdsgfsdgfs 3y ago

"No proper health care etc for people cleaning their flats or flipping their burgers..." Almost $1 trillion was spent on Medicaid last year. What are you talking about?

Arainach 3y ago
Eligiblity for Medicaid is limited, and many important groups are "optional" which essentially means "no, if Republicans control any branch of your state government".
- mariojv 3y ago
  Yes. In Texas, you need to be pregnant, have a child under age 18, blind, disabled, or over 65 to qualify, in addition to the income requirements: https://www.benefits.gov/benefit/1640%7D https://www.benefits.gov/benefit/1640%7D

mattpallissard 3y ago

America has always been a make it or break it place with most people not making it. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just pointing out that has been our schtick for hundreds of years. It's the land of opportunity, not the land of guarantee.

prottog 3y ago
> It's the land of opportunity, not the land of guarantee Absolutely. > most people not making it By any metric, there's at most a handful of countries where the median person is as well off as in the US. I struggle to say that most people aren't making it here; or if they really aren't, then not making it in America is better than making it in most other places.

RestlessMind 3y ago

> No proper health care etc for people cleaning their flats or flipping their burgers... That seems FUD. There are safety nets like Medicaid, Obamacare subsidies and EMTALA for poor.

542458 3y ago
41% of U.S. citizens carry some sort of medical debt, and 24% are considering bankruptcy to solve a medical debt issue. https://www.debt.org/bankruptcy/statistics/ https://www.debt.org/bankruptcy/statistics/
- iancmceachern 3y ago
  Thank you for posting this. This is both staggering, and also highly informative. It's clear this is crushing the US middle and lower classes. I've seen a recent trend in churches, where they use their excess funds to buy people's medical debt out of collections and forgive it. It's the best thing I've heard in a long time. I also have been recently battling with Blue Shield of California (but they're all bad). They were denying me my medicine, in a similar way that Cigna was proven to deny claims by ProPublica recently. I also found out that a few years ago Blue Shield of California was stripped of its non profit tax benefits because it had billions in surplus that it was just sitting on, you know, making profit. Since then they seem to be spending money to out their names on things like opera houses in SF and advertising, but not putting it to work in the community to make real impact. I propose we create a movement that demands that insurance companies use their excess profit, etc. to buy people's medical debt and free them of it. How do we get this movement going? Blue Shield of California alone has hundreds of millions a year in surplus, that would buy out billions of dollars in medical debt for people and completely change many people's lives for the better.
  - prottog 3y ago
    > I propose we create a movement that demands that insurance companies use their excess profit, etc. to buy people's medical debt and free them of it. How do we get this movement going? Blue Shield of California alone has hundreds of millions a year in surplus, that would buy out billions of dollars in medical debt for people and completely change many people's lives for the better. Blue Shield of California had a net loss of almost a billion dollars in 2022[0]. Should they do the reverse in that case and put their excess loss by putting more people in medical debt? [0]: https://www.blueshieldca.com/en/home/about-blue-shield/corporate-information/financials https://www.blueshieldca.com/en/home/about-blue-shield/corpo...

trollerator23 3y ago

[flagged]

hef19898 3y ago
And people cannot be both, hackers and having a social conscience?

dang 3y ago

Please don't take HN threads into generic ideological (or, god help us, nationalistic) flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35899436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35899436.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]