Political Memes

I'll never understand why normies love these freak grifters. They all look weird too. It makes no sense to me.

Although I disagree with Dr. Oz's premise, his argument that he's given here is sound.

And a person who makes that argument must believe in universal healthcare. Because there are people out there who can't work today because of health issues, or who are caregivers for people with health issues.

Universal healthcare also allows people to start their own businesses without fear that their decisions will lead to worse medical outcomes.

There may be nothing better for the old GDP than universal healthcare.

The true enemy in healthcare are not utilitarians. It's the small government idiots and the authoritarian sycophants.

Of course, as Dr. Oz is a MAGA conservative, I assume that he doesn't actually have this logical consistency. He likely doesn't even care what he's saying and just makes the most convenient immediate argument and doesn't have any underlying morality that it is based on, except to support Dear Leader, because that's the MAGA way.

Man they don’t even have the sense to know what the quiet part is anymore

It's one of those rare cases in which both sides should agree- whether you believe a government is an institutional arm of people who agree to collectively take care of everyone, or whether you give no shits and only want to make money. And yet somehow America still has terrible healthcare.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of ~~happiness~~ record CEO compensation.

Ok I've had it with these fuckin gimps, fuck the Republicans

I think a more subtle point is that even by the most Business-oriented, cold, calculating, empathy-devoid, mathematical take possible were humans are nothing more than wealth generating cogs, the system is still shit because it's not using said cogs in the most optimal way (which requires the "cogs" to be healthy and at least somewhat content with life).

In other words, even by the criteria of the hardest of hard Right, the system we have is shit because the over-exploitation of those they see as wealth producing peons and sub-optimal allocation of resources for necessary auxiliary social system means the entire system is producing less wealth than it could if said "wealth producing peons" were kept in better shape and more content.

I honestly agree with him- but only because people who are healthier and productive tend to be a lot happier and better off overall and not because GDP go up.

“You are worth keeping alive only as long as your owners can continue to extract value from your existence.” - Dr. Oz

The government and economy exist to serve the people. That's democracy.

Kind of the right thing thing for the wrong reasons. Helping people be able to function is of course the goal of a health system.

But like with everything, the government exists not to look after the interests of the citizenry but to create the right conditions for business.

I think I first figured that out when I was learning about the governments’ historic treatment of native Americans. They really only sent the army out to the frontier when there was a major business venture being harmed by unrest.

And yet they appear to be trying to make people sicker

The mask has come off. Huzzah.

Even these stupid fucks admit that by privatizing basic needs it causes severe economic harm yet still they cannot give a damn.

Until we automate your job with AI and or robotics.

An analog from education and affirmative action: the arguments that ultimately got it through the Supreme Court was that diversity helps white students with additional perspectives. There was a social justice argument, but the courts didn't care.

I bring this up because there are people for whom these soulless arguments work, and sometimes that's an ok stop-gap as my example allowed thousands of people into education. If it gets people healthcare, some would argue it should be included in the list of reasons.

I'm not exactly in that group who buys that, but I admit I don't know what will ultimately get Americans their right to healthcare.

but the reason we're getting sick is work-related stress, sleep deprivation, and bad diet in first place. The correlation between poverty and early death is undeniable

So what happens after you retire?

I don't like where Nominal Dr Oz is usually coming from, but the bare transactional relationship isn't all that wrong.

We participate in many social contracts in our day-to-day life. We hold doors, we say please, we pay for things, we clean up our mess; these are part of what makes us not dirtbags, but it's a relationship that has rules; it's why that asshole listening to loud music or shouting into a phone held like a pizza slice (where are the reality-show cameras?!) inspire such offense.

In the larger society, we work to get money for basic needs. We pay taxes into a consolidated pool for the things that are bigger than our household. We elect people to manage our stuff for us, because we learned that we can't individually manage the commons without tragedy. Parks, clean water, reliable power, all of this needs to be provided and maintained for the public with public money managed by people chosen by the public who can do that best. When that fails, we get Trump.

Healthcare is like parks: we can't afford it individually, and our ultimate focus on the 'I' and the 'now' makes us bad managers. So we appoint people to manage the best healthcare system we can build, try to keep selfish conservatives from corrupting it for their own gain, and we fund it from taxes. Obviously, this is another part that Americans may not be aware of, and so I'm hoping they can just go with it for a sec.

And there the relationship is plain: healthcare wins when everyone's a healthy, productive, contributing member of society, naturally. When that happens, everyone also pays taxes as per a proper sliding scale (again, Americans will want to suspend disbelief and imagine that's happening while their own system isn't doing that effectively right now), and taxes fund, in part, more healthcare.

A healthy healthcare system exists directly to improve the health of all people in society, and indirectly funds its own existence.

While qualitative KPIs are hard to show concretely, more healthy, smart, working people pay more tax, and that's quantifiable. Pared down to a brutally simplistic relationship, it's good healthcare <-> more tax paid.

I support this. Sure, I want people to be healthier, just like I support schools I'll never attend just because I want people to be smarter. But this healthcare<->taxes thing is something I can sell to the selfish, transactional-thinking conservative dirtbags as a quantitative, invest-now-profit-later kind of thing I think speaks to most conservatives and the shrewd investment-porn they want to believe they're part of.

I'm proud to occupy a position where I pay far more in taxes than I'm currently using in services; and having been on the other end of it more than once, I'm very glad to be paying healthy taxes because that's a far better problem to have. I think we pay too little taxes above a certain earnings level - this region removed its scaled supplemental medical services payment and so it's supported only from tax proceeds - and I worry it's put our healthcare at risk of manipulation by populist shitheels trying to cash in on a sicker healthcare system (America: you are here) and tell us it's the only way to do it (America and London and Paris: you are here), and I wish it took a healthier portion even though it makes poor-kid me a little sad if I can't keep more for myself. But that's how it is, because that's the contract we all enter into by existing in this region under the rules we vote on and upheld by people we choose.

My senior year English class (2005), we had to write a philosophy of life paper, and mine was a tongue in cheek pessimistic outlook where we existed to reproduce and produce. It was intentionally incredibly insincere, and yet here we are 20 years later and I've unfortunately hit the nail on the head.

I mean, sure. If we as a society believe that healthy and informed citizens make a better society, can we please work on that? Sure, a side effect is that I'll probably get more healthy years and will work longer - we need that anyway since we can't sustain the pyramid scheme our grandparents relied on.

To say this administration wants us healthy or educated is quite a stretch though.

I will work longer. In return I want a healthy environment, kids well educated, people who can't work taken care of, and the resources I need to stay healthy and work.

Also, this ignores the rampant ageism that is ever-present in the workforce.

In today's economic circumstances, you are probably best working until you are 65 or more, unless you want to be impoverished in your later years. Also, your health care is tied to the workplace for the most part. Unless something changes drastically to correct this - something like UBI and/or better SS/Medicare, better ACA, etc., that's just the way it is.

In addition, biotech may add years of healthspan to people's lives, meaning they would be very able to work and live healthy lives much, much longer than was expected of prior generations. On the other hand, you have this accepted culture where it's like people start signaling to people as young as 35 that maybe they are getting long in the tooth.

I mean....what in the FUCK? How is that math going to work out in the aggregate?

A little late for mutual prosperity, Capitalists.

Fuck Dr Oz

Monster