It’s not _usually_ a real threat but in the USA one has to consider that large swaths of the population have always been without healthcare, so for many, it’s not taking it away, it’s keeping it away.
I know.
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Costs have to be spread in some way. Taxation is the easiest way as it’s a known set of processes for collection of monies to then be distributed in some fashion.
[that’s why every nation has always had taxation and always will so long as there’s money]
I don’t have an answer though. None of the answers presented have been fully satisfactory. Returning to the “wild west” of healthcare we had before is no improvement but then again, we never really left it all that much.
Fears of “more taxes” when we already are one of the lowest taxed nations on the planet always seemed ridiculous, although nobody liked to be taxed, just as there’s always some people who say “why should I pay for public school when I don’t have kids?” which misses the whole point too.
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Maybe a pro-bono system for healthcare might work.
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HSAs only work beyond a certain income. You have to have savings to save and when you live day-to-day, week-to-week, savings of any kind is an unimaginable luxury.
Tax credits is also a failure of an idea for low income because when you already don’t pay much taxes, getting taxes taken off doesn’t help much if it does anything at all because standard deduction already is enough to wipe off many people’s taxes.
So $0-Tax Credit still = $0 afaik.
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“Every man for himself and every woman too because women wanted equality so here’s your damned equality so eat it.”
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That’s where we’re at right now as a nation.
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Life sucks anyway so let’s keep it sucking? Life’s a bitch and then you die and our policies will entirely reflect that philosophy?
Nah. Don’t buy it.
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Civilization doesn’t require thriving or entitlement. That’s growth-oriented civilization. But you can be a civilization that’s found an ebb and flow, a natural balance that is sustainable over decades and centuries which leads to maximizing life satisfaction. Might not be giddy happiness rolling in the dough, achieve your every wish and dream through your cleverness – but a civilization should mean the citizens come first and the society functional.
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I don’t think we’ve ever left tribalism though. In the USA we have blue money, nuveau riche as two tribes. There’s blue collar which is a tribe. White collar is a tribe. There’s many others.
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Now, those are the white tribes. Then there’s the ethnic tribes, the gender tribes, the lists go on. Some people don’t recognize other tribes as valid and attempt to put members of a declared tribe into another category of tribe.
Some people don’t realize they’re in a tribe but others can see they are.
But whatever mess it is, we’ve never left a tribal culture.
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Traditionally, professions were tribes. Some still are. Lawyers are a tribe of their own which relations with the political tribes and the big business tribes. Doctors are a tribe with subtribes of their own. Universities are also tribal… man.. it could be fun to deconstruct the USA into its tribes. if I wasn’t so lazy.
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My sister was part of a pitcrew in a New Jersey “Microstock” racing thing in the early 1990s. The track’s long since been torn up for developers but it was the last holdout of an old time.
Anyway, these were tiny little cars, just big enough for one person and the knees would touch the hood, the motors in the back. Much more powerful than go-carts less powerful than… whatever the next class up was.
anyway, yeah, they were private companies under the regulations of whoever ran the Microstock racing association. They were their own little world unto themselves.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5n0h0SfdK8 oh shit you can find anything on youtube. I was wrong. The track was torn down in 1989, the last race in 1988, so I was probably 14/15 years old going to these things. Ridiculous events but fun.
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