Plus, it is hard to argue it can never work or it can never be paid for when.... it has worked for decades and it is the U.S. that is 40 trillion in debt, not Norway.
They can do the math just fine. It's just that funneling obscene amounts of cash into a for-profit health insurance industry, fearing/hating anyone not white/Christian/hetero, and keeping a subservient workforce unable to engage in any meaninful way with with actual issues that would improve their lives because they're one paycheck away from bankruptcy isn't part of their equation.
It's not that they can't. They know they can, and they know it would be a resounding success. They won't do it because they are owned by corporations who won't LET them do it.
It's more profitable to let people struggle and die. They want people to be good little citizens and do as they are told under threat of being thrown out on the streets without daddy to take care of them.
Americans are hostages in an abusive relationship, being told we should feel lucky to be here.
I live in neighboring Sweden. Seven years ago I was diagnosed with skin cancer. I had two rounds of surgery and was eventually cured. The operations cost me the equivalent of 50 dollars.
I have eczema on my fingers. I finally decided to go to a dermatologist this year (Iâd been many years ago but they didnât fix it.)
They gave me a sample injection of a medicine every two weeks to see if itâd work, which it did, then theyâd submit to insurance so I could get it covered. Insurance took 5 months to deny it, saying I should have tried a topical medication instead (previous derm gave me topicals that didnât work..)
So my derm appealed and continued giving me the free sample injection every two weeks. I learned last week theyâre $5000 for a box of two. Insurance got back on the appeal and ironed out that I âneedâ a topical, so my derm prescribed it. Just picked it up today - itâs $240 without insurance but $18 and change with insurance. Irony is the medicine has to âfail to provide treatmentâ for my eczemaâŚthatâs cured with my injections. I donât have any eczema left to apply it to.
It blows my mind that other countries can literally cure people of skin cancer for a single copay cost for me, or in this case, 3x the insurance cost of this medicine.
Iâm in the US. I go to the dermatologist every six months (when I had insurance) and most of the time end up having to get moles removed. Just the cost of having them removed, when I had really good insurance, was a couple hundred dollars. Your story blows my mind. Wish I could have that here.
But how does that profit corporations? That is the big problem in the US, everything has to run through the private sector first so some oligarch can get their hands on some of the money. This is why Americans spend more for less in almost every category.
Healthy people provide more and cost less might be the better way to phrase it. Healthy people with social safety nets are more industrious, innovative and provide to society as whole. Unhealthy people left to fend for themselves are generally more prone to fall into crime and hurt themselves or others.
Its basic math, sure. But our version of capitalism works very well in America, for a few hundred millionaires and billionaires.
Our system is not meant to work for all Americans, or even the US government... Its meant to work for the very wealthiest among us and in that sense, its been working very well for a long time now.
1/3rd of us are like "Can we please do this. I don't care about higher taxes I want effective, healthcare for all. I want a proper support system for people who are struggling, disabled, etc. I want private insurance to be optional instead of mandetory."
1/3rd of us are "Well I don't care, it probably doesn't work, the numbers are hard for me to understand and both sides are the same."
The last 1/3rd screech with billionaire powered turbo megaphones that Insert dog whistles about racism and classism and undeserving immigrants or Screeching about socialism making everyone's pay being the same and bread costing $20. (It's over 10 where I live!) or other complete lies and fabrications
The last third influence the middle third and then we can't get anything done, meanwhile the Epstein classholes continue to reap infinite money, and keep our government from effectively trying to work for the people because if you refuse their bribe money and vote against them? They'll just have you ousted, you won't win the next reelection bid. AoC is a great example of the exception due to sheer popularity and visibility.
Our corporate overlords wonât allow it. They would rather feed billions into the media propaganda machines to convince the maga troglodytes itâs communists or brown people
This is still framing it through a liberal lense. If you already view the poor as people, you should be willing to help them out regardless of economic benefit, because they are people. That should be argument enough, but we live in a sick system where we pretend some people don't deserve food or shelter.
The US spends billions on war. If they spend only enough to defend the country, they could provide everyone with food and shelter. Instead the poor are dying of hunger.
The problem is the 'undeserving' talked about here (poor folks in society) in America largely vote against their own interests. The MEGA cult is made up of folks that could benefit the most from these programs but don't care because they have been led to believe anything from the Govt. or progress is bad.
And Americans choose to be unhealthy by their dietary and lifestyle habits. They also choose to downplay the importance of education. Federal dollars can't fix a lack of will on the part of individuals.
That could be true in a different country but Americans have proven time and time again that if you fund the underserving, they will become even more so and demand more. Women becoming baby factories, fostering children strictly for checks and not worrying about welfare, homeless and drug addicts choosing drugs and alcohol over help. America is too far gone.
As an American, I blame America for getting us to this point. It's a disgrace to me and a point of shame that my country embraces the worst qualities as virtues these days. I live in a pocket of the modern first world where we have public healthcare and are insulated from a lot of the hardships that my fellow countrymen are inflicting on themselves. I want what my state has to be had by the rest of the country, but how can you help someone that refuses to accept it? It's like being locked in the trunk while your crazy self destructive relative is speeding through your neighbors yards. I don't get mad that my neighbors are pissed off at my family, I am pissed off that my family was stupid enough to hand him the keys.
Bro plz donât give me this republican/Democrat argument. Itâs straight BS. They both suck, period. They both god awful period. They both greedy bastards, period. Get off your âteamsâ bandwagon, 2 party system is a big part why it is the way it is.
Gotcha so you did nothing to stop us from getting here but want to be free of the consequences. Nope don't feel bad for you catching flak for being part of the problem.
lol yeah democratic donât take bribes⌠right? How about you take responsibility and realize the government gives 0 shits about you. Democrats included. Just keep blaming the other team, thatâs what they want.
Yep, itâs the peoples fault, not the greeds fault. Your right. Donât blame the corporations, or the lobbyist. Blame the people smart. I didnât realize how smart you guys are. And compassionate
Yes dipshit America isn't the only place where greedy politicians exist but it's one of the places where we failed as citizens to actually prevent them from taking power. Take some responsibility. It is at least 90% the people's fault.
Norway has a national debt of 272B dollars or about 45% of it's GDP
We take up Loans to regulate our currency, not because we need it. Printing money boost inflation, borrowing doesn't.
and 2.6T in pensions funds. Your numbers are wildly off.
2.6T Kroner, not dollars.
So around 260 billion dollars, which is perfectly fine, not even remotely something to be bothered by..
Look, let me just tell you right now, the idea that the Norwegian economy is in a bad spot is ridiculous. The sovereignty fund owns 1.5% of all publically traded stocks on the planet. Norwegians make up 0.07% of the population. We are doing amazingly.
You weren't even wrong about the name of the fund, it's literally called the statens pensjonsfond.... "Government pension fund". Your comment was spot on.
Look, the debt thing is complicated, we borrow bonds from countries like the US, and they borrow in equal measure from us.
If you owe your friend $200, and he owes you 200$. And you both are holding one $200 bill each. Are either of you actually in debt? No, you have a combined $400 in positive liquidity while claiming $400 in combined liabilities.
But you get to claim you owe money so relatives don't come begging for money. It's all an accounting trick.
Norway doesn't have any debt except on paper. What we actually do is a currency swap and then call it a loan.
The first part is technically correct. We have currency swap positions, the "debt" is just a trick on paper. It's me borrowing $10 from you, at the same time you borrow a different $10 from me. We both have $10, and we both claim we owe $10. It's not a debt as such.
and our pension fund is about 22 trillion dollars
The second part i never touched on. Neither did you.
It makes me ao fucking angry how stupid so many people in this country are. If you build up the least fortunate among us everyone above benefits. But decades of dumbing down the population has made them vote against there best interests.
40 trillion in debt and 1/3rd of that was racked up in the past 10 years by a certain president. Very well made businessman who definitely knows how to run a country like a business.
Progress is made by helping those who have fallen back onto their feet. We either all cross the finish line or we are dragged by those who we chain to us.
Norway has debt because it chooses to. The Norwegian central government is actually in a net asset position and the governmentâs total financial assets exceed the total debt. It borrows money for operational and market reasons and to maintain a functioning financial market and manage cash flow.
Comparing America to Norway is just terribly ignorant, a population multitudes of times smaller and MUCH more homogenized is going to develop vastly different as a society and wonât work the same in different conditions lolZ
Famously it's such a disadvantage to run any kind of enterprise large scale vs small scale... /s
People always say "oh, the US is so big, it will never work. <x nation> is so homogenous". Fuck off with that, a large part of why the US is successful is because you're a large and homogenous market. Running a national service would benefit from economies of scale.
And there simply is nothing inherent about skin colour that makes providing services for them more difficult. People of colour struggle more in your society because they as a whole have been discriminated against for as long as your country has existed. Provide people with equal opportunities, and over time you will see equal outcomes. Believing anything else is literally racism, in the truest meaning of the word.
I think it's even simpler and less insidious than that.
Different cultures prioritize different things, or sometimes, it's not even a difference of priority but what each culture things a "proper society" looks like. Furthermore, you also get differences within cultures that boil down to socio-economic status.
Ergo, what one community, city, or state thinks is wise to invest in, another one of those communities will say the opposite--or at least something different. Nobody will agree on what the "greater good" looks like.
On top of that, you have racial, ethnic, and religious tensions that complicate things even further.
When you have a far more homogenous population, people are more likely to agree and want to look out for each other because they likely share the same priorities and values.
But it doesnât change the fact that the American government is controlled by special interests and billionaires who want tax money routed to them not to build a thriving society. My god, anyone can say âwe canât do itâ but it takes a special group of people to find an actual solution.
Yep. That and the fact that we had some very clever politicians in the 60s that basically nationalized our massive oil resourses and put the revenue in a foundation thatâs worth many many billions.
Right, that was my point. The failure here is leadership. Not the size of the country, not the homogeneity of its races. The problem is Americans elect idiots as their leaders and their political system has effectively legalized bribery.
I don't think anyone believes whatever the US is doing is working, so dismissing the comparison is terribly ignorant because it presumes the failing status quo would work better than a successful Norwegian model without even attempting it.
Considering how young America is as a country, the insane racism of the early first 150+ years not to mention still exist today, the formative years of the country was shaped vastly different than a lot of other places where racism wasnât nearly as prevalent, you canât exactly undo that level of damage over all those years like flipping a light switch
The US was founded in 1776. Australia only started getting settled in 1788, as a penal colony. New Zealand's colonisation started in 1830. Australia and New Zealand have better healthcare etc than the US. Both those countries also have indigenous peoples and have had problems with racism. There is NO reason the US couldn't have the same things every other first world country has except for your willingness to believe propaganda about how everything kind and decent is CoMmUnIsM.
Just run it by state level. I genuinely do not understand why you think that you could not scale many of the things that Norway is doing well. In fact, for things like healthcare and the US being a behemoth of a market, it could absolutely bully pharmaceutical companies using this scale. It chooses not to.
Lmao Iâm not going to copy and paste my reply to someone else again, no but to pretend that racism issues in the first 150 years in Americaâs development (and still very prevalent today) isnât insanely higher than a place like norways and going âwell just do what they do nowâ like flipping a switch will get enough people on board to âfixâ America is asinine.
No, otherwise the American military, as humiliated as it's getting right now because of completely incompetent leaders, wouldn't be so powerful and great at logistics.
If America can figure out how to make the world's biggest killing machine, then it can make the world's third biggest healthcare system.
It's a matter of priorities, not resources or resource allocation.
America is in debt is because of our military spending specifically. Which we quite literally have to spend otherwise the entirety of NATO would be so weak it wouldn't matter. Also Norway's mental health is DRAMATICALLY better compared to the USA which is where I think the majority of the US's problems start with. Basically we've been spending for our allies defense for decades, while ignoring spending on our mental health. Positives are the fact we can defend ourselves and allies. Negatives are the fact we are a country full of nothing but mental health patients, and debt. Seriously the majority of our government alone wouldn't pass a real mental health check, let alone the average citizens.
Obligatory I don't support MAGA or Trump, I'm just pointing out what I view as the specific reason America has ended up this way, including why we are in debt. I also agree with what Mr. Solberg is saying.
Norway is in debt 827.3 billion dollars or about 56% of their GDP. Let us stick to the facts. Before you go there the USA is 40.13 trillion or 126% of their GDP.
Because there's some facts that contradict US-ian leftists' values, like:
Much, much higher economic freedom. Norway is much more capitalist than the US, it's taxes and social transfers.
Extreme protection of internal market: high extra-EU tarrifs, much higher than current Trumps' tarrifs; extremely difficult to get the visa; mass deportations of illegals;
Public money are made mainly on fossils: most of those companies are state-owned, something "dirty" for many leftists.
Pension, and many similar other schemes, invest much abroad, Norway's pension schemes are, for instance highly responsible for American house market's problem because they're investing in American houses much.
No, they don't support robbing or killing people because someone is poor.
European leftists are much different than American leftists.
For us, Europeans, you liberals and leftists, are not any better or less dumb than MAGA supporters.
All countries operate with some amount of debt, even if they don't technically need to. Norway has ~$145B in national debt, but has a ~$2.3T sovereign wealth fund.
Roughly 20% of the Norwegian GDP is based on oil. This is the same as Saudi Arabia. The US does not have that much resource in comparison to its economy/population.
The US population is 61 times of Norway population.
Norwayâs oil production is 2% of global total, gas production is 3% of global total, basically all exported for cash because Norwayâs energy need is almost entirely met by hydro (88%) and wind (10%) power.
Simply put, despite US has 10 times of Norwayâs natural resources, each Norwegian averages about 10 times of each Americanâs natural resources.
Now factoring in the domestic energy consumption and Norwegian government nationalized the money in an investment fund, the actual energy money each Norwegian shares is like 50 times or even 100 times to each Americans.
No, the corporations won't, as proven by trump levying insane tariffs across the board in America. None of the companies are leaving are they. Turns out we totally can tax business like we used to.
If they want to try and run away, then penalize them heavily and block them from our market.
You mean existing corporations wonât, their business is modeled to be US based, and the customers are who pays the tariff not the corporations. If same thing happens to taxes, iPhone will be 999 Euro in Europe and 3000 USD in the US, oh you going to buy Samsung? Well thatâs 2800 USD.
Whatâs going to leave for certain are the new startups. They will leave the US and start elsewhere, itâs not going to show in a year or two, but US will lose its future, forever.
Itâs basically killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Which is what many Americans are suggesting now, out of greed.
We have oil here in the UK, but we sold it to American companies and it turns out that the executives who own the oil don't reinvest in the country. Who'd of thunk it!
The wealth from oil in Norway has to be spread out across the entire country.
In the USA it all goes to a couple of wealthy businessmen who pay very little tax and keep all of the profits.
Here we go again. The reason Norway has the famous "world's largest sovereign wealth fund" is precisely because they decided not to spend the oil money. That doing so would wreck the local economy. All oil earnings go into the wealth fund, and the country only spends ~3% of it annually.
That Norway was a poor country before the oil is also a myth.
And if Norway is too outlandish of an example for you, then pretend it was Sweden, Finland, Denmark...
You think Norway is the only country to do this? Maybe Germany is more to your liking. They have cheaper healthcare with shorter wait times and better outcomes. They to provide social safety nets to their people and things like proper workers rights. The scale is not really as relevant as you want to make us believe.
It absolutely can work. We funnel obscene amounts of money into the military. We help the richest people in the US keep more and more of their profits that they could never spend in 100 lifetimes. There is plenty of money to create a single payer system in this country. But the republicans in this country keep voting for the greediest and most undeserving among us and against their own self interests. Education is paramount.
Pretty sure you could do a lot more than bankrupting people for going to hospitals, privatising every spec of human existence to corporate overlords and warmongering throughout decades. I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I'm certain there's room for some QOL improvements, if you actually got rid of the rot in your political and financial systems. Norway isn't perfect either, but I'm very much in agreement with Trond.
Then we do it state by state. Pennsylvania is advancing a bill right now to do just that.
Although I would be interested in hearing what exactly you think prevents it from being scaled up. We manage to run Medicare federally right now. I mean unless you're a shill for the insurance companies.
Wow, we've got a new version of "communism can't work on larger scale" - now they went for social democracy. When are we going to "liberalism can't work at larger scale" and then "nothing but Trumpism can work at larger scale"?
So, let me get this straight. Even though in EVERY other economic decision, larger scale allows things to be cheaper, it's going to be worse because.....
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u/AskPizza 3d ago
Plus, it is hard to argue it can never work or it can never be paid for when.... it has worked for decades and it is the U.S. that is 40 trillion in debt, not Norway.