So here it is, the problem that we hide so poorly…on almost every statistic that deals with wellness, or decency, or happiness the USA ranks at the bottom.
This is at the bottom of other nations whose personal wealth is way below the USA.
America is not great again, it isn’t even close….
Our medical care system is horrible unless you are rich; simply said, and a President has vowed to make it much worse by attacking the “Affordable Care Act”, allowing predatory insurance companies to rule.
You all know how medical insurance works, have sky high premiums that an employer reluctantly pay for; and then don’t pay claims…and do not cover preexisting conditions…What a scheme, offer insurance that never pays.
Did you know that another Prop 13 type rip off “law” was passed that put struck limits on how much money you could get if you sue for malpractice…it is so low that most law firms won’t or can’t touch a case that will cost a lot to run, and have a lid on the amount of damages can be collected…no wonder the health care system is so out of control and corrupt..
That is the way insurance companies make hideously high profits, offer insurance at high prices then never pay a claim..and thing with malpractice insurance, doctors have to pay huge premiums for coverage that is never paid out…nice scheme….
Billions of dollars are invested that deliver no service…
Any of you know an insurance salesman? I do, I was one part time during the summers as a teacher..I was told, “Your money is in our client’s pocket”…
We were selling life insurance with huge commissions and little real help to the client…but that didn’t matter, it was the profit that counted.
This ranks right up there with real estate agents, in it for the money and that is it…taking huge profits based on exploding home values, selling a product that does not offer any protection from illness, nor any decent home. It is simple, with a 5% commission rate predicated on the price the home sells for, it is in the agent’s self interest to keep home values sky high; that discriminates against middle class and lower castes…and also by no small coincidence people of color.
Home prices have skyrocketed because there are no restraints on home prices…Prop 13 in California, that has been copied all over the nation, actually REWARDS escalating home values. People no longer have to pay more substantive taxes if their home appreciates, but buying a home practically bankrupts ordinary citizens…They are left with impossible payments for mortgages. that can result in homelessness with one missed payment…landlords make out like bandits.
This is but one failure of the American Experience.
If you are a person of color, you are precluded from even attempting to buy a house with “them” in the suburbs..You are relegated to rentals, where greedy landlords long ago benefitted from a property tax system” Prop 13 again” that literally is a swindle.
Apartments are not built because they would be taxed as current value rates of the property…but still, landlords and retail owners jack up the commercial rent, but pay a tax rate of 1978…A mall built on 1974 has that tax rate even though the value of the spaces have multiplied many times over…even with just regular inflation it is a tragedy, because the city and county services that property tax pays for , police and fire protection, as appreciated in cost.
Property taxes are for public safety, public welfare, public services that keep the mall going, the retail going to provide services to the public..and that is what is broken because of Prop 13 and other laws like it.
It is a scam that came to fruition during the backlash era of the mid 1970s and white privilege once again genuflected and backlashes the paltry gains people of color had made with the voting rights act and the civil rights act.
The tax revolt that happened then, was actually a revolt by the white caste to end any chance people of color could be helped up with public services.
I know I was teaching then…I got a layoff notice, summer school was ended, counselors were cut, class sizes exploded, firemen were laid off, police were laid off in a spasm of white privilege that destroyed whole neighborhoods.
Homelessness has it roots in Prop 13. And it made the ruling oligarchy very rich! It was sold as a roll back of the Big Government of the New Deal.
It really was a hard right, RACIST reaction to Civil Rights.
Civil Rights legislation could not survive with no funding…any integration of schools or improvement of schools stopped…I know I spent 36 years in the pubic school sector.
In 1972 when I entered the vocation the United States had the best public school system in the world, although segregated in the nation, when I left in 2006 it had one of the worst…and it was still segregated! In a very real sense, minorities were better off before Brown…can you imagine..
That is what civil right’s advocates, with a great amount of pessimism at times, say…one step forward three steps back!
And rich catering Charter Schools, using public money of all things, copy the “Academics” of the south, that had kept segregation of schooling alive regardless of Brown v the Board of Education. Most cities are far more segregated in schooling than in 1954 when Brown was decided…
Prop 13 perpetuates racial discrimination in schooling of our children and supports the mess that the chart above so vividly shows!
No wonder they oppose anything that tries to fix this rip off. There is yet another effort to overturn Prop 13 on the ballot..it is losing in the polls, under a huge and well funded campaign by the racists who created and perpetuate Prop 13.
The result: the end of public hospitals in counties, the total gutting of mental health facilities that are affordable, the end of every welfare aspect of government and the destruction of public education…and a homeless embarrassment that kills thousands a year!
Since California is the nation’s most populated state and “richest”, it is contributing a lot to the embarrassment that the above chart shows, America is a shit country…for the poor…who are kept that way by making a few very rich.
The losers…OUR CHILDREN!
Today, right now, the imbalance of wealth is at its worst in American history; a very few very rich and the poor.
We elected and may re elect a billionaire as President..
The effect the pandemic has on this mess of public welfare is tragic and comprehensive. It is also telling…by every statistic the poorer you are the more of color you are, the worst you will do if you catch the virus..and the more likely you are to catch the virus.
The richest country on earth has the worse pandemic statistics, the most deaths, the worst in every category.
How is this possible? Read the above.
And no matter how much the rich try, this cannot be sustained…the time will come when people will simply rise up, or give up, in such numbers that the golden goose will be raped in the public square.
It has happened over an over again…leading to dictatorship and worse.
MAGA has the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world…and they will be used in an end of times disaster because America is rotten to the core.
And we know about it..we know about the injustice but go to a feel good circle, or a class that purports to erase racism…the participants feel good about themselves, they have finally “seen the light”.
I teach such a class to seniors, I go to such a class…and I respect anyone else who at least tries…but the first thing you discover is it is all about the money…slavery was about money, discrimination was about money; America’s Original Sin was chattel slavery and the extermination of Native Americas to steal their land…and it created the super rich who are continuing to “build” a plutocratic racist and fascist run country.
A favorite defense of these plutocrats is how well THEY have built a great economy and the best of everything..that those who complain are the enemy, the lazy, the colored…and they attack by mobilizing the also discriminated against lower white caste..who are their foot soldiers in a fascist and racist effort to build an empire of greed.
Again, the “plantation economy”…
But we feel better if we go to classes that tell us the truth.
Right, and then in the privacy of the voting booth, WE vote for more white supremacy every time…we vote out of fear for the cesspools of human injustice that exist in their central cities…we give to a homeless charity, while voting for Trump.
White privilege refuses to give in, because of this dirty little secret.
And it we do vote enough to change things, the SCOTUS, the Senate and the Electoral College exist to make sure the plutocrats stay in power…
The USA has a caste not class system….it is based on color and race that ignores the scientific fact that there are no races of human beings, the subjugation of large groups of people leads to great wealth for a few (this is what I all the plantation economy)…that even a civil war could not end; the Reconstruction efforts failed miserably in twenty years…
So it is perfectly explainable that the USA ranks almost last in the welfare of children, which is the gold standard of comparing countries on the planet.
If you can’t take care of your children something is very wrong.
It’s called racism and prejudice period…and it’s called plutocracy..the rule over all by the few. And if you follow the money, you discover very quickly who is to blame!
It will be called fascist dictatorship soon if we don’t wake up…