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this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024
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Politics
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Taxation is one of the most baffling things about the US: between federal, state, and local taxes, Americans get around a 35% tax pressure, which is comparable to some of the "Communist" countries in Europe with a public health system... except the US doesn't have even that. Beats me on what do they spend those taxes; it sure is not to reduce the 135% GDP government debt.
Stock market cap is 185% GDP in the US, so at least that part makes sense.
It's spent on what is by far the most powerful, expensive, and expansive military in the world, with funding about equivalent to the next ten militaries combined. All of Europe barely has any military spending by comparison; NATO is almost entirely propped up by the US military industrial complex. If US foreign policy wasn't so doggedly imperialist, we might have room for some healthcare.
That's not even getting into how medical corporations in the US are more or less financially unrestrained and allowed to make as much money as they want, paired with an insurance industry with the same conditions, and both industries becoming more and more consolidated, with all the big players participating in the stock market. The result is a race to the top in which everything is made far more expensive than it needs to be in order to please shareholders. In this environment, spending government money on US healthcare is substantially less efficient than the same spending would be in a European country.
Correction of these markets, as with housing, is likely to be financially devastating to the economic elite, but also critical to the prosperity of real people in this country.
US military spending is lower than Poland's... and yet Poland does have a universal healthcare system. Both countries are spending less than 4% GDP on their militaries.
I wonder if the same applies to US military corporations.
So, less bang for the buck in all cases... except for "the shareholders", after discounting all the C-level salaries and benefits, the creative bookkeeping, and non-dividend reserves... meaning only for the "big" shareholders, not the average Joes.
Sounds like death by a ~~thousand cuts~~ million leeches.