Originally published at: David Cross on how much America actually sucks | Boing Boing
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Yeah, well, it ain’t no Venezuela. Or Russia. Or China.
Or Somalia.
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“PragerU” is not an actual university, right?
Just one more lie they try to slip by everybody, as part of their general gish-galloping?
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well, THAT was the smiley happy pick-me-up that i needed.
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Private health insurance alone wipes out the bulk of the difference between that portion of wages taken in the U.S. vs. that taken in other, more “soshalist” OECD countries.
However, running the numbers requires the ability to do math and knowing what the OECD is requires quality education, and guess what else the U.S. doesn’t adequately fund for all its citizens!
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So, it’s basically all true, etc. because we privatize things that other countries don’t.
One mistake is at 10:10 where he says “America has the highest percentage of people making less than the median income”.
No, every country has 50% making less than the median. That’s the median is.
I’ll concede that he is probably referring to the most people “far below” the median, but it still feels like playing with statistics, when he really doesn’t have to.
PS - It’s not going to change any time soon. Big business was left in charge of the US, at least as far back as when Nixon handed the rights to health care to Kaiser Permanente, beginning the whole privatized HMO system that is now ridiculously out of control.
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As a foreigner I just can’t understand how it can be legal to hire anyone for less than the national minimum wage. In my country that’s illegal and the workers will win the case against the company. You don’t complement their salary with tips, you have to pay the wage full stop. Tips are exactly that: tips. Extra money.
I just can’t wrap my mind about the amount of rights that people from the USA get stripped off in the name of “freedom”. That’s not freedom, that’s a scam. They are just painting the bars red, blue and white and saying to you that you are safer inside them.
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Deleted because I confused median and mean; probably the same error as David Cross made 
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“Free markets” and “personal freedom” get jumbled up in the rhetoric. It sounds like they’re talking about one thing, but it’s really the other.
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I suspect the writers flubbed and should have written “mean”.
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Not yet. Who knows what the next election cycle will bring.
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David Cross on how much America actually sucks
This much, yeah that’s the sciencetifical term, this much.
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America isn’t the only country which issues its own currency but doesn’t spend its taxes on services, David.
I may have fallen down the rabbit hole that is MMT - except it ain’t no theory.
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I don’t like these kind of videos. I feel like they are right for the wrong reasons. It’s emotional thinking trying to disguise itself as well thought out argument.
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You might like to compare your country to Germany maybe? Or Spain? Or another country that you might view as a peer?
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When I drove from New York to Los Angeles with a bunch of friends in 1989 we were struck by how many poor people America had.
Parts of the country are fabulously wealthy, of course, and most of the place pretty much seemed to compare with home: ordinary people living ordinary (first world) lives, but the poor parts of America were just like the poorest parts of the poor countries we had seen in Asia and Africa.
It didn’t seem to much much difference to the locals though, almost everyone we met was delightful, even in Gary, Indiana which seemed a bit like a war zone. Not New Orleans though for some reason where everyone seemed to be really angry, but we couldn’t figure out why.
Also it was rare to get a decent cup of coffee.
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This is like the third time this week, BoingBoing posts things just after I seen it.
Weird, has Lockdown mutated all of our brains?
Are we all merging into one over mind?
Is the internet shrinking?
<cosmic hamster/>
Back on topic…
All of us Lefties already know everything in this video. Hopefully it reaches someone who needs to hear it.
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WE’RE S’POSED TO BE and on top of that a lot of the world’s countries do better than Venezuela, Russia or China too.
What’s behind your lowering the bar to somehow justify U.S. greatness against the evidence?
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The US of A could suck a whole lot worse.
It’s not there yet.
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Must be nice to be able to say so.
I live in the state of California, one of the richest places on the planet, in a nice building that happens to be in a Congressional district considered the 10th poorest in the nation.
Enjoy your delusion.
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