He’s literally on video banging underage hookers in China but okay

Plenty of things got set on fire during the George Floyd riots. Not sure what that fixed though.

I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make any sense. You get more of what you measure, so if you measure diversity, you get more diversity. Any increase in quality will at best be accidental. In fact, it might very well get worse due cultural differences creating additional friction.

What do you think people should do about things like, hiring unqualified white people over qualified black people, for example?

Simply hire the best qualified candidate, regardless of skin color. No DEI needed.

You’re free to believe that, but that’s not what actually happens IRL. How it really works is that someone will look at the race and gender makeup of the team and if there aren’t enough women or POC, they’ll focus hiring a black lesbian, or a transgender Asian, or whatever else they can find, even if their qualifications don’t quite hit the mark.

The point of DEI is to increase “diversity, equity, and inclusion”, it’s literally right there in the name. Do you see competence, excellence, or qualification in there anywhere? Me neither. And that’s because that isn’t what DEI is about.

So you’re saying hiring based on race instead of qualification isn’t a problem?

Risky click of the day

Sounds like Flappy Wings except with explosive diarrhea

Sure, and apples can be oranges if they just grow thick, fleshy skin.

Poor Bernie has lost it if I think that that’s how it works 😢

Unfortunately those middlemen are bribing the politicians against change.

Well, again, how is a single payer system going to solve that? As long as there’s a government, it can be bribed, and if it’s not the insurance middleman doing it, it will be somebody else. If anything, giving people a single point of access to bribery will make it easier to do so, not harder. The more you centralize power, the easier it is to corrupt.

Perhaps, but that doesn’t mean a single payer system would solve all of the problems. First of all, that’s still a form of insurance, because it cannot be sustained if it simply pays out each and every claim — after all, the money has to come from somewhere. There HAVE to be people who pay in more than they get out, otherwise the system will simply go bankrupt.

Also, even in a single payer system, healthcare is still a limited resource (because there are only so many providers, i.e. doctors and hospitals, etc.), so rationing has to take place or people will simply abuse the system. In most cases, this means long waitlists to see specialists and/or qualify for expensive treatments. Just ask Brits or Canadians how long they have to wait for such things, and consider whether you’d be willing to risk not getting a lifesaving procedure done in time. It’s not unheard of for Canadians to simply go to the US if the wait is too long, because there they can pay out of pocket and get it done quickly instead of risking their condition getting worse (or Americans going to Mexico to get it done cheaper).

Sadly, this is a much more complicated issue than you seem to think, and I’m afraid such kneejerk approaches aren’t going to help solve it.

Thanks, appreciate the link. However, it does not corroborate the theory that health insurance companies alone are responsible for that difference. From the article:

There are many possible factors for why healthcare prices in the United States are higher than other countries, ranging from the consolidation of hospitals — leading to a lack of competition — to the inefficiencies and administrative waste that derive from the complexity of the U.S. healthcare system. In fact, the United States spends over $1,000 per person on administrative costs — approximately five times more than the average of other wealthy countries.

So while the administrative overhead definitely IS very high compared to other countries, it doesn’t even account for more than 10% of the total healthcare expenditure — meaning eliminating insurance companies wouldn’t just magically make healthcare 50% cheaper for everyone.

I don’t doubt that insurance introduces a certain amount of overhead into the equation (after all, they have offices and wages to pay), but I’m a bit skeptical of that 50% figure. Do you have a source for that?

Not in the slightest. According to a congress report, American healthcare expenditure was was approx. $4.6 Trillion in 2023. That $77B would barely even cover 2%.

Right, because Trump would definitely just pull all the federal military out and leave all their equipment behind like Biden did in Afghanistan. /s

Oh, he would DEFINITELY talk about that

No. The US federal government does.

Florida would certainly be a lot more realistic (shorter land border, much easier to reach by sea and air without having to cross US territory). Still 4x the size of Denmark however. Would definitely be a stretch, although not quite as huge as California.

The problem is that Denmark would be responsible for defending it, and logistically, that would be a nightmare. There is basically no efficient way to ship an army there without crossing US-controlled territory, be it via land (impossible), sea (US took back control of the Panama canal, remember?), or air (minimum 12 hour nonstop flight, and that’s only if you’re crossing US airspace).

On top of that, Denmark only has 6 Million people, so even if they shipped literally all of their soldiers there it probably wouldn’t be enough to realistically hold it against a US invasion. Trump could simply order the US military to take it back and they’d likely finish the job in less than a week. Sure, Denmark could draw from the local population and invest in massive military training programs, but that would take years to accomplish and likely cost a good chunk of even their combined GDP (which they’ve already pledged to universal healthcare and a free Danish cookies).

Realistically? Never.

California is literally almost 10x the size and 7x the population of Denmark. And just the logistics of having to manage a dependency this large that’s at least a 12 hour flight away would be a nightmare, both economic and organizational.

This would likely be one of the biggest dogs any tail has ever attempted to wag (certainly in modern times) besides the British rule of India, perhaps, and we all know how that turned out.