This article said something quite plain and obvious: Obama when in office despite his rhetoric was an enabler and propagandizer (willing and not) of expanding middle eastern conflict. That is just objectively true despite how painful that may be for Obama supporters. Trump was not. The only "conspiracy" here is the speculation that it is a reason for the intelligence community disliking him. If you think that is a "pizza place pedo conspiracy" than I don't know what to tell you, except that Glen Greenwald is one of the foremost experts on US Intelligence and has seen tens of thousands of documents that few people have seen.
> I'm not sure whether people understand just how big of a problem this is.
I'm usually the last to defend the construction of the US economy, but I think this is a bit of an overreaction. The stock market is not the economy. Big Tech bubbles are bad, but this isn't 2008 where people lost their houses because of financial engineering.
I think the bigger story (and issue) is just how few people are involved in and benefiting from Tech. These companies have massive market caps because they employ a tiny amount of people relative to how much money they make. For every one tech worker making high six figures there are a 50 people doing low-level healthcare service work. The vast majority of Americans own trivial amounts of stock, so they don't even benefit indirectly from the Tech bubble. All of this is just exacerbating the radical divergence of the haves and have-nots in our economy.
Taxes aren't the issue. It's how people are taxed. Income tax is just one way people are taxed and they aren't the ONLY type of tax on income (despite people using the word tax to mean income tax). We have social security tax, payroll tax, sales tax, capital gains tax, estate tax, property tax, and (maybe possibly a wealth tax in the future). And that's just individual taxes.
People say this all the time and it is false: California is a high tax state. No it isn't. It is a high Income tax state. It is an extremely low property tax state.
To put this in perspective, I live in Boston and my mom lives in California. She owns > $3 million dollars worth of property that she pays 1% tax on when she bought it (for around 500K total) so an effective property tax rate of .16%. In Texas she would be paying 3% property taxes which 1800% percent more. She also gets depreciation on the rental property that is marked up to when some it got transferred to her so she gets depreciation amortized over 18 years at ~2.5 million valuation. She also collects social security, a pension from a previous government job, and rental income. All unearned. Some of the rental income comes from Section 8 and other welfare programs (paid for by young workers). Let alone medicare which she will certainly get way more out than she ever put in.
I on the other hand, make ~190K a year. One year I got lucky with stocks/bitcoin. I've been paying in the 250K income tax bracket for 3/4 years. I've also paid >5% state income taxes every year on that money. I've paid double or triple my mom's taxes every year despite her making total earnings including investments way above me. ON top of that I have high payroll taxes, sales taxes, and no deductions. I live in a crappy apartment (near a bunch of frat houses) that costs 2K a month (a little less than my mom's mortgage on a house worth $1.7 million).
For young people that have no property and income we are in an awful position. All we hear is increase income taxes, but that is the only way we are moving up the socio-economic ladder. We have many types of inequality in the US, but the most extreme is age-related inequality. Older people have almost all the money in America. The largest generation now is the millennials and they hold <10% of US wealth. Millenials are now in their prime working years and income is the primary way they will acquire wealth as they hold almost none of the assets in this country.
Its no wonder that younger and middle class people are flocking to places like Texas where they can afford a house (because property taxes prevent money flooding into real estate), and can actually get ahead because of little to no state income taxes.
Exactly, this is a problem with the "may-issue" system that California and a minority of other states use. Most states have "shall-issue": there is a specific list of objective requirements set forth by law; if an applicant meets the requirements, then the official must issue the license.
California's may-issue policies give local officials too much discretion, leading to arbitrary decisions and bribery (apparently).
The fact that this extremely dismissive comment can be upvoted makes me despair about ever fixing a broken healthcare system. Covid may have killed 250K in the US, but negative interactions with the medical system kill 150K year at the minimum each and every year. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_su... This makes medical errors (which include negative effects of properly prescribed drugs) the 3rd leading cause of death in the US. More aggressive number such as Peter Gotzche's put that number even higher by including more nuanced side effects. He estimates that psychiatric drugs alone kill 500K people a year in the west. https://vimeo.com/178943789
Doctors as a general rule are very bad at listening to patients and our medical system simply does not track drug efficacy or side effects. You might be in a privilege situation to have never had to experience this, but there are millions of people who have.
I live in a country with socialized medicine. People trust the healthcare system since we "pay" 0$ for access. (pay in quotes since obviously taxes are significantly higher)
And Drs. I know are great at listening! I'd honestly go as far as to say they listen too much at times; I don't tell a mechanic how to do his job, it's not my place to tell a Dr. how to fix me since I have literal 0 understanding of the human body.
Again, maybe its a socialized medicine vs privatized medicine problem, but it absolutely boggles my mind the level of distrust in what should be a respected profession.
My comments aren't meant to disparage, but point out that colloquial evidence is not a substitute for research and the scientific method. I will call baloney on people who spew it.
Having lived in both privatized and socialized medical systems I actually find that the privatized health care system was better at listening. It cost more money, but it was definitely better bar none.
I think doctors are as good as their tools (education) and the feed back they get. They can only listen to what patients say, however most people aren't able to explain in detail what is going on. As well, western medicine tries to focus on specific locations/ailments and can miss the holistic portion of sickness. This challenge is compounded by the fact that many illness have similar symptoms and human bodies are intensely complicated.
I don't trust a doctor 100% (many of my friends do) however I do put a fair bit of faith in their training. Anything serious requires more research on my own as doctors are fallible.
The thought you raise that you shouldn't challenge or ask questions of what a doctor is telling you is quite alarming and I would wager that kind of laziness leads to poor health outcomes. As I said, doctors are human and are fallible, the research (i.e. human health systems) is not complete, and they are working on deeply complex issues that have incredible amounts of interactions that are unknown and incredibly challenging.
That said - the doctor better be able to explain in a straightforward manner in order to gain trust. And any profession that you should just "inherently trust" allows openings for laziness, abuse and bad outcomes. Strongly disagree with you.
The best doctor’s office experiences I’ve had were in a country with socialized health insurance (not socialized health care). I’m pretty convinced that private providers with public insurance is the optimum for providing a high standard of care.
There was also a supplemental private insurance market which covered a range of elective treatments. Best of both worlds!
What if there aren't straightforward explanations to what needs to be done? Should I not trust my Dr because they can't bring complex medical concepts down to my level? Do clients of software development companies require that the developer explain things in "clear terms" for them? I thought we called that marketing wank.
Drs, nurses, and all other medical professionals are required to do training/recertification in my country. I "inherently trust" them because the system allows me to.
As for private vs. socialized, that will always be a point of contention. Some people want to be able to choose, but even being able to choose shows some amount of (and I hate this word) privileges. The vast majority of people simply do not have the financial means to "choose" a Dr in a privatized system; if they can even get access to one.
My mechanic might know what to do, but his incentives can include things that are in opposition to mine, such making more money from an issue (real or not), doing less work, even getting more social attention and status for making their work more important.
By the way I'm an expert investment structured, and you might be interested in these neat things called CDOs I can hook you up with ..
I agree with the statement about privatized - and that wasn't what I was referring to. You had said that they public health care listened better, I wanted to refute that. I also recognize that in private health care your insurance and ability to pay impact the health care you receive. I don't think that is the best mechanism to provide good care for the entire population.
All I am saying is that if they can't explain things better than take this pill, than I wouldn't trust them. Like I said, I trust their education (which is the certifications) but I will certainly run questions up the flagpole if I have them. They shouldn't be given "god like" carte blanche status in terms of no questions.
That last question is a tough one - I would wager it is because everyone knows someone who has had some bad experiences, and there have been many a story about seriously effed up medical experiences. Most people can't do statistics and then get deeply concerned that the likelihood that they might have bad experience then spills over into lack of trust. That's my two second hot take.
I should make clear my opinion - I do trust western medicine, vaccines, science et al. I do not however trust them 100% - mistakes are made, and this is my life. I can question them, and I should. Their role is to instill trust and not disregard peoples concerns out of hand.
For sure; and I'm not saying we should give people carte blanch. But those mistakes, errors, whatever we want to call them, are the exception, not the rule.
Do you distrust your co-workers if they make a single mistake?
Do you have factual references for the claim about errors in medical care being exceptional? From impartial sources?
I'm honestly skeptical of the claim based on my life experience. I've heard directly from people of numerous of terrible errors that destroyed their lives. e.g. bone implants that were poisonous, different implants that weren't sterilized properly, forced saving of patient life to charge/steal his assets instead of passing to family - direct from people I know well, that happened to them.
Then I've personally experienced a common pattern of doctors not being able to identify things that weren't common or obvious based on their flowchart style diagnosis. I've also experienced a lot of successful diagnosis of simpler obvious issues.
My co-workers aren't responsible for the quality and length of my life. Their mistakes have an incredibly small impact compared to a mistake by a doctor (depending on the scope of problem).
I agree. Its hard to counter the feeling that HN is getting too big for its boots. In certain "culture war" threads the easy to digest opinions are beginning to dominate. Maybe I just payed less attention a few years ago but I never noticed this in the past. Will it spread past the culture war threads or will it not? Who can tell at this point.
Hacker News is only pro science in some areas. Try looking at threads about organic farming or GMO seeds and you will discover a different side. That but one example, easy for me to see because my biases are different.
Being pro-science is very unpopular with the anti-science culture. It implies global warming is real, humans evolved from apes, and a whole host of other implications.
Considering the GGP of this comment is on the verge of dead and it includes two citations, with one being https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ which is a world class medical institution, I think the answer is obvious.
We have to go all the way back to 2000 when Bush v Gore happened and Democrats claimed the election was stolen. Actually no, we just have to go back literally to just the last election when Hilary asked for recounts after conceding and then the Democrats used false claims of Russian interference to discredit the election. Heard of the Muller probe? This is a highly unorthodox election due to the high number of mail-in ballots. We have unprecedented censorship of social media by corporations that function as arms of a political party. Trump has a right under law to challenge it. Hillary asked for recounts very late in the process in just the last election with no evidence of corruption. It is not a coup to challenge under law an election process and refuse to concede till then. It’s happened literally multiple times in US history. You are not from the US but you may be surprised to learn the US is not a direct democracy but has a system in place called the electoral college which is there for managing electoral disputes.
There is a very big difference between asking for recounts and declaring yourself winner and the election stolen before there is even an attempt to discover any evidence. Aldo in Gore's case it actually was extremely close, unlike in current elections. So, I'm sorry, but this just reads like standard whataboutism.
Ehh -- I'd just reconsider the 'literally all' part. There are alcoholics who just chase the feeling for itself -- a quick fix for sad thoughts, but not for all. It's a complicated disease, but some with issues crave booze regardless of how they're doing mentally. At least in my somewhat limited experience.
I am an alcoholic and for me it's more you replace any activities outside of work with drinking as a substitute for doing stuff. Later you realise you didn't just replace activities alcohol replaced people too. So in the end all I had to do was drink.
Uh, that doesn't mean it isn't true. Alcoholics don't drink for no reason. (Source: had to quit drinking because of the problems it was causing for my life.)
Of course not. Nobody does things for "no reason." It's more that sometimes we don't understand the motivation. With alcoholics (and drug addicts in general), my guess as to the reason is that it feels good, or otherwise does something for them. I've been told one's first time doing heroin or smoking crack is pure heaven. People who quit generally do so because it causes secondary problems for them. And, that makes sense to me, because why quit something that feels good, but doesn't cause any other problems?
Most of this is pure speculation and extrapolation from my own experience. I had a short period of time when I was drinking excessively to deal with work stress. Once I noticed, I was able to stop, because I knew it would cause me problems later on. Luckily, I never suffered any health effects or legal issues from it, mostly because it was only about a 2-3 week period when I would drink every day after work.
That was not convincing at all and had some really glaring errors. Dr Shiva somehow confuses percent of overall voters with percent of Republicans to make it seem like there is a conspiracy going on. He says that margin for Trump should be a flat line so that if there 5% republican all-ballot voters it should be off by the same margin in Trump vote as a precinct with 80%. However if 20% of republicans flip that would mean 1% flipped vs 16% in those examples which is a line with a slope. Literally flipping those graphs would make them look the same for Biden as for Trump. All it shows is basically a kind of regression to the mean. Precincts with high republican or democratic all-ballot voting weren’t as republican or democratic as they seem. There could be many good reasons for that such as that voters that go against the way their communities vote tend to not be all-ballot voters.
Also, Dr. Shiva is not an independent voice. He ran in Massachusetts as a Republican.
> When your political agenda consists of annoying and offending "the other", they need to be present to take offense.
I'm not sure what you mean by "the other". "The other" is an actual concept signifying people who are somehow excluded from society. Rarely do people get banned for going after "the other". Most of these people get banned for going after mainstream journalists and politicians. Many don't get banned for going after anyone at all. And many get shadow banned without any notice or explanation.
Secondly, I don't think people on the right consider what people like Milo (for instance) do to be performative cruelty. They see it as exposing hypocrisy. They see it as exercising their god-given right to free speech.
