"The only weapon we the people have against these tactics is regulation"
That's not true. If it's a company doing it, you have the choice to not be a customer of the company. Don't give them any of your money if you don't like how they do business.
The same can't be said of government. If you don't give your money, in the form of taxes, you go to jail.
> That's not true. If it's a company doing it, you have the choice to not be a customer of the company.
Ah yes, 2026 America, famous for its wealth of commercial competition and diversity of business practices. Just the other day I was bragging to my friends how many reasonable options I have for so many of my critical necessities, including televisions and other cheap plastic cheap manufactured in China and white-labeled by glorified dropshippers.
The corporations are quickly becoming the government you are so quick to demonize. The death panels that FoxNews spoke about 24/7 back in 2010 are now embedded into our insurance industry, except you have no democratic recourse and will be statistically drained of your wealth before your offspring have a chance to inherit it, all while they watch you die and stress over the Byzantine processes that are “economically efficient”.
Luigi didn't trigger any sort of mass uprising against the elites, didn't inspire copycats or revolutionaries. No reform of insurance or pharma costs occurred, all of the problems he ostensibly opposed are still there. He just got arrested and became a meme for a while.
Meh, I think a lot of my people in my cohort are a lot more sympathetic towards people who lash out violently against the Kafkaesque capitalist system that many of us are suffering under. It also engrained a cultural understanding (in my cohort) that profit-seeking is not a shield of innocence: many agree that the leadership of United was inherently evil due to their business practices.
So, there has been a shift in our shared reality. Maybe not as significant as something like 9/11, but maybe an order of magnitude or two below it.
But it doesn't solve the problem. Does it sound like the nationalized healthcare in Australia is going well? How about Canada? The NHS in Great Britain?
Those countries DO have better healthcare outcomes than the US. You are so ignorant.
The US is #1 in developed countries for infant and maternal mortality.
Americans die from preventable and treatable causes at much higher rates than residents of peer countries, alongside a life expectancy of 79, or two to four years lower than the average for OECD countries.
We spend 18% of our GDP on healthcare, NEARLY DOUBLE the average of other peer countries.
The number one cause of bankruptcy is medical debt.
When will the American people wake up and realize their private healthcare model only benefits the rich that are able to afford the care.
You can cherry pick particular metrics to make the US healthcare system work better or worse than other countries. The US does badly on infant and maternal issues, but that's largely caused by social and lifestyle problems unrelated to healthcare. On the other hand we're at or near the top in 5-year survival rates for most forms of cancer.
Medical debt is not the number one cause of bankruptcy so you're simply wrong there. Most consumers who file for bankruptcy have some medical debt but the most common cause is a sudden loss of income (like losing their job). When consumers don't have enough cash to make ends meet they prioritize paying for food, housing, and transportation, and stop paying medical bills. Thus the medical debts tend to accumulate but this didn't really cause the bankruptcy.
I do support measures to reduce healthcare costs and improve access for patients but let's be clear about what's actually happening.
>The US is #1 in developed countries for infant mortality.
This is only because the United States is unique in its huge amount of preterm babies, which some other developed countries do not even count within their infant mortality statistics. If we had the same average infant gestation length as Sweden, we would be tied for fourth best with France and Portugal, which considering how obese we are is pretty impressive. If we had that and adopted more restrictive reporting categories like Poland or the Netherlands, we could very well be reporting as the lowest.
Its amazing to me how Americans (and others) act as if there are only 2 things in the world the US (private) system and public system that apparently everybody else on the planet has.
The US system is neither fully private nor are those other systems fully public. Its a false binary people use so they don't have to actually engage in the details of how different systems operate.
Nobody is arguing that the US has a good or 'the right' system. And nobody should argue that the British NHS (or systems like it) is some amazing magical place that gets everything right.
> When will the American people wake up and realize their private healthcare model only benefits the rich that are able to afford the care.
And yet one of the countries wit the lowest spending % of GDP on healthcare with very good outcomes has a system that has a lot of private aspects.
It's a technically both a private and public healthcare. But let's make this clear, it is dominated by private health insurance. The vast majority of people are privately insured through their job. The public insurance in America is not consistent, reliable, or good.
The US is #3 in the world for it spending on healthcare as a percentage of it's GDP, actually 16.69% in 2023, right behind Tuvalu and Nauru.
Maybe do some research before you state absurdly wrong things
Not vast. About 55% (workers and the family members) are covered by employer-sponsored health insurance. And that mostly self-selects for the younger and healthier so the coverage is less for random person.
Most retired people are not covered, and ironically very often the sick are not covered.
"We’ve allowed Amazon and Ticketmaster and Walmart to exist and they shouldn’t exist in their present form."
Do you realize that when Walmart moves into a community, prices charged for everyday things overall drop significantly, both at Walmart and their competition, which means that poor families are able to buy more with every dollar.
They then get to skim the other side of those subsidies, too, since they sell so many items that qualify for SNAP and WIC, as well as being one of the largest if not the largest prescription supplier in the country.
And what happens if walmart closed up shop? Do those employees magically evaporate and not need benefits? Why are we putting the blame on the employee's best employment option?
>What competition? When Walmart comes to town, the competition closes.
Why? Because they're sending goon squads to trash all the existing businesses? If walmart replacing "the competition" because they're offering lower prices and consumers are switching, why is this bad?
Everything explodes and people die in the streets.... No, other businesses move in to fill the economic needs because there is a profit to be made and provide jobs in doing so.
>Because they're sending goon squads to trash
You have a horrifically simplistic world view and can't imagine where goon squads actually are.
There was an article around 2 decades ago on how Walmart manipulates prices at an unimaginable scale via their suppliers. If you supply Walmart they automatically become your biggest customer. Walmart knows this, and has you by the proverbial balls. If you don't meet their demands they drop you in a heartbeat which is a death sentence for any business who's capitalization is not in the 10s of billions. There was a saying in this article I can no longer find but to summarize.
"To compete against Walmart is to invite death. To work with Walmart is to embrace it".
Simply put they are so large they have near monopoly power over a good chunk of manufacturing.
>There was an article around 2 decades ago on how Walmart manipulates prices at an unimaginable scale via their suppliers. If you supply Walmart they automatically become your biggest customer. Walmart knows this, and has you by the proverbial balls. If you don't meet their demands they drop you in a heartbeat which is a death sentence for any business who's capitalization is not in the 10s of billions. There was a saying in this article I can no longer find but to summarize.
So what's the complaint here, that walmart negotiates aggressively, passing those better prices to buyers, and that's... bad? Given we're in a thread complaining about healthcare, should walmart do the opposite, instead using the insurance company strategy of encouraging their suppliers to pad their margins, so they can offer "modest" (in % terms, high in absolute terms) markups?
Around the turn of the century, my grandmother lamented how Wal-Mart had ruined the shopping experience in her small town. When the local hardware store and other stores closed, she ended up only with Wal-Mart where she said the employees didn't know anything and couldn't really help you. Anecdotal, I know, but this is a common refrain throughout the country, that by using their monopoly power they're able to undercut local businesses until they go bankrupt. The assumption is that we're left with is a net win due to lower prices for the consumer, but let me tell you another story.
An older relative had a very successful small conglomerate of businesses. One of them manufactured something costing close to $100 that Wal-Mart was interested in selling in its stores. After extensive negotiations, my relative told the Wal-Mart VP no because Wal-Mart was pressuring them to use cheaper parts that would make the product wear out more quickly. Wal-Mart didn't care because they'd be able to make the sales and then consumers would come back to buy again sooner, but my relative felt that was dishonorable. The VP said it was the first time a potential supplier ever walked away from him. They are notorious for their abuse of suppliers, and the ethical concerns are often very palpable. You might suggest this is simply market forces playing out, but we decided long ago that monopoly power often leads to a market we don't want to see in this country.
We the people get to decide what kind of society we want to live in. Their monopoly power means that in so many of the rural areas where they are, they might be one of the few viable employers. When people are poor, it's not so easy to just tell them to relocate to another geographical area, so it's easier for the entities benefiting from that to maintain the status quo at the expense of others. If we decide that for Wal-Mart to stay in business in the USA they need to pay employees more, with health insurance, then so be it. If they can't, then they can just go out of business and be replaced by a company that is able to navigate that balance better, offering pretty low prices while paying a bit more in wages.
Walmart is able to offer lower prices because it does not pay its employees enough. The people being hurt is the society at large that has to allocate taxes towards SNAP and other social benefits so that Walmart can continue to underpay people. Those resources could go to other programs. That is why Walmart is bad.
Walmart is paying what people are willing to work for. The "greeter" standing at the door is not creating $25 an hour in economic value. The biggest issue is we as a society have overextended SNAP and social benefits, trying to equalize outcomes, rather than recognize that entitlements should be a last resort and a safety net against things like starvation. Someone should not weigh 275 on SNAP.
Does SNAP need a better system to provide healthy food? yes.
Should employers be required to provide sufficient earnings such that employees do not require SNAP? Also, yes.
Is blaming employees who are on SNAP due to Walmart overhiring and cutting hours of at the threshold where the earnings would cross into full time with federally regulated benefits in order to pass the cost of operations to the public acceptable via absurd reductive reasoning a bald case of blaming the victims? Yes.
I'm not sure whether you are pretending that Walmart's practices are acceptable, due to a willful disregard for the complexity of the larger systemic failures that permit corporate abuse, or due to simple ignorance.
I'm not sure which looks worse, but neither makes you seem compassionate. Though the fat shaming does make you look like an ass.
>Does SNAP need a better system to provide healthy food? yes.
Yes, SNAP absolutely should not enable unhealthy consumption, especially because the majority of those diseases of affluence just hit taxpayers again via Medicaid spending.
>Should employers be required to provide sufficient earnings such that employees do not require SNAP? Also, yes.
The thrifty food plan from the USDA puts weekly food costs at about $75 for a man and about $60 for a woman. Walmart's company wide minimum pay is $14 per hour. Minus a bit for taxes, add a bit back for EITC/other tax credits, and you are covering a week of food in less than 8 hours of work. They have sufficient earnings. They choose to spend the earnings elsewhere because taxpayers are subsidizing their food.
>Is blaming employees who are on SNAP due to Walmart overhiring and cutting hours of at the threshold where the earnings would cross into full time with federally regulated benefits in order to pass the cost of operations to the public acceptable via absurd reductive reasoning a bald case of blaming the victims? Yes.
Walmart is under no obligation to hire them as full time employees. They are free to accept a different job, negotiate a contract for full time employment, etc. They aren't a "victim" because the job they accepted doesn't meet every one of your standards. They are assumably mentally competent adults who made their own decisions and are free to make different decisions at any time.
>I'm not sure whether you are pretending that Walmart's practices are acceptable, due to a willful disregard for the complexity of the larger systemic failures that permit corporate abuse, or due to simple ignorance.
Walmart's practices are acceptable. It's incredible to think that a job offering double the federal minimum wage (or more), in a reasonably safe, air conditioned environment, along with retirement matching, employee discounts, and even paid tuition/books is somehow corporate abuse.
How much do you think stocking a shelf is worth?
>I'm not sure which looks worse, but neither makes you seem compassionate. Though the fat shaming does make you look like an ass.
It’s wild to blame Walmart for government subsidies when it’s the government not Walmart who decides who gets benefits.
Is Walmart to blame they hired a single mother of 3 for $20/hr? Would this women be better off if Walmart never existed and she was unemployed?
And then turn around and blame Walmart for selling essential food items for low prices because SNAP can be used to pay for them. Would you rather SNAP beneficiaries pay more for groceries so they have less to eat?
Prices may drop, but wages drop even further and the compound effect of local government subsidies and loses when competition dies means everyone loses because everything in the local area dies.
The irony is that the WSJ had profiled Situational Awareness with a glowing story just 1-2 months ago. It reminds me of my old adage: "You don't want to read about your positions in a newspaper" - it paints a large target on your back.
You don't seem to realize that a cornerstone of American conservatism is limited government and the promotion of human freedom. His antipathy towards unnecessary state surveillance of individuals who have committed no wrongs seems entirely appropriate for a Republican.
I find the experience of shopping at Costco very uncomfortable. The parking lots are jammed packed, everyone is darting around with large shopping carts, the lines for the cashier are long, sales people are trying to pitch me on travel deals as I walk by - it almost feels like going through a busy airport. I am a Costco member, but I only go to the store when I really need to. The fact that I can shop Costco via Instacart was a gamechanger for me.
That's not true. If it's a company doing it, you have the choice to not be a customer of the company. Don't give them any of your money if you don't like how they do business.
The same can't be said of government. If you don't give your money, in the form of taxes, you go to jail.
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