When plebeians do something that makes sense to them, but not to him, the “Intellectual Yet Idiot” uses the term “uneducated”.
- Nassim Taleb, Skin in the game
Now do healthcare and quality of life
The hidden costs of health care are largely in the denial of antifragility. But it may not be just medicine—what we call diseases of civilization result from the attempt by humans to make life comfortable for ourselves against our own interest, since the comfortable is what fragilizes.
Less Is More
For instance, a small number of homeless people cost the states a disproportionate share of the bills, which makes it obvious where to look for the savings. A small number of employees in a corporation cause the most problems, corrupt the general attitude—and vice versa—so getting rid of these is a great solution. A small number of customers generate a large share of the revenues. I get 95 percent of my smear postings from the same three obsessive persons, all representing the same prototypes of failure (one of whom has written, I estimate, close to one hundred thousand words in posts—he needs to write more and more and find more and more stuff to critique in my work and personality to get the same effect). When it comes to health care, Ezekiel Emanuel showed that half the population accounts for less than 3 percent of the costs, with the sickest 10 percent consuming 64 percent of the total pie.
- Nassim Taleb, Antifragile
If democrats are so smart why did they lose the election
It’s not an aptitude test.
Me when I cherry pick.
What is Oklahoma ranked higher than Massachusetts in? Show us your favorite cherries please
You can’t come at these people with facts.
There couldn’t be any other factors at play here, it’s clear as day. Red is bad and blue is good.
Stellar work, truely impressed. I can tell whoever whipped this up is highly educated and well respected. What a gift.
Who said bad and good? Those are words that you brought to this thread.
In case you’re wondering why you’re getting down voted, it’s because you didn’t even offer up a valid argument and instead engaged in ad hominem, which is a logical fallacy.
I get that correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but if the richest states are almost all blue and the poorest ones almost all red, that is a very strong correlation and trying to claim it is insignificant only makes you seem the fool.
You seem to be intelligent. Ask yourself why this post made you so upset.
You really didn’t have to throw in the “seem to be intelligent” part but that very conscientious of you.
I’ll go ahead and fix it for you though and be the asshole.
In case you’re wondering why you’re getting down voted, it’s because you didn’t even offer up a valid argument and instead engaged in ad hominem, which is a logical fallacy.
I get that correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but if the richest states are almost all blue and the poorest ones almost all red, that is a very strong correlation and trying to claim it is insignificant only makes you seem the fool.
You seem to be intelligent.Ask yourself why this post made you so upset.
Damn, did know that. Carry on Massachusetts and the Oklahomans fail to learn and continue to eat shit.
CHADachusetts completely topping removedlahoma
Jokelahoma
Second in American health care. …
Obviously. What else would it be when comparing two American states.
a decent amount of americans seem to think they are the global best in every category so probably not obvious enough even.
I hate having to explain this to people when I talk about the insane cost of healthcare in the US.
“but US healthcare is the best so of course it’s going to be the most expensive”
No, you moron. It’s the exact same procedure by equally qualified doctors using the same equipment.
meanwhile here it’s generally not expensive, but we can’t seem to come up with a reasonable way for foreign doctors to gain canadian credentials and continue to have waits anywhere from hours to coming the next day instead
Uh…Hawaii? West Virginia? Rhode Island?
These are also states, yes.
I hate Republicans too, they’re selling the whole country for parts, but this meme sucks.
First of all, “all counties were red/blue” is not what “unanimous” means.
Second of all, I don’t think “ha ha your state is poor” is the grand slam argument you think it is.
First of all, “all counties were red/blue” is not what “unanimous” means.
I agree with you there.
Second of all, I don’t think “ha ha your state is poor” is the grand slam argument you think it is.
Takes a lot of mental gymnastics to boil down all the listed differences as “state is poor”. Unless you mean “poor” as in “in bad shape” and not “economically suffering”. I’ll assume you mean the former as that’s the only way your argument makes sense.
I think it’s more about how a state is voting against its own interests. There is NOTHING about the Republican platform that would improve any of the listed metrics. If anything, Republican politics would only further worsen an already bad state of affairs.
And of the off chance your initial argument was entirely economic, it’s Democrats who want federal government involvement to help poor states.
There is NOTHING about the Republican platform that would improve any of the listed metrics.
They can make those metrics in other states worse.
LOL. You’re right, if they make Massachusetts worse than Oklahoma then Oklahoma’s ranking would improve! I never thought about that. BRILLIANT!
I mean, take a second to look into why red states are poor.
And the only reason their state and local governments are able to remain solvent…
These states would collapse completely without the largesse of the federal government (funded by blue states) if they ever seceded.
We are pretty poor here.
This type of meme isn’t helpful when people already think the Dem Party isn’t for working class people and elites only lol. Trump listened to people issues about material needs even if he lied. It still worked. Harris and Dems went on the whole time not addressing issues with the economy. Adopting a real working class agenda and free college would do wonders and putting resources to getting the crazy folk away from Education.
Are Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh not “working class” cities? I think there are a whole lot of people who would like a word with you for writing them off.
Almost as if working class people don’t have to be stupid.
Ever been to MA?
Crapton of working class people there. I mean a lot. It is possible to have top-tier education and health care yet have working class people in the same State.
Being a rural state does not by default equate to “working class”. If anything it probably means more people per capita on government assistance or in poverty.
Working classes don’t need healthcare or education? Quality of life is irrelevant? A strong economy doesn’t matter? One of the highest minimum wages doesn’t affect working class? I
Free college (depending on income)doesn’t matter?
Misses the actual pain points. These are good things objectively but these are not the things that people want change
Maybe we’re learning that democracy fails when the people vote for the things they want over things that they objectively need.
And yet people in Massachusetts generally elected not to change. Maybe not as big a majority as expected, but by a solid amount. Maybe all it takes is paying attention to healthcare, education, quality of life, free college, etc. maybe we have at least one model and all we have to do is follow it, instead of negativity and blaming mysterious pain points that you never actually identify
i think you’re missing their point. the working class does want these things, but the meme reinforces the idea that the dems only take care of the rich.
No it doesn’t. Massachusetts is full of working class people.
I think you might be confusing cause and effect here. Perhaps the people in MA are “rich” (I would say, doing well. There are tons of working class people in MA, they’re just not necessarily living in squalor) because the dems took care of them. Almost as if we have tons of data backing this up… That Democrats consistently do these types of things, while Republicans constantly walk them back.
“the people” seem to want to change ‘THEYRE SEATING THE CATS, THEYRE EATING THE DAWWGS’…so, fk if “the people” know what they want.
How? Does Massachusetts not have working class people in it? Is it a state comprised entirely of the wealthy?
im not saying i agree with this interpretation. just that the meme reinforces an erroneous causal relation depending on the bias of the reader. im dont know these places very well, but im used to seeing govenrments treating lower class neighborhoods with less attention. its a common perception.
It’s probably more like no one has helped us improve our healthcare / education / quality of life, so we’ll take a gamble on someone different.
Butcher knife is always gonna lose to hand pistol.
I prefer toe pistol, myself. No one ever expects it.
Maybe they voted against the incumbent so overwhelmingly because things are hard.
People vote based on their feelings.
When they were feeling pain, the message from the Dems was about how great the economy was, but the reality is that the stock market and GDP don’t speak to the quality of life of these people. To them the Dems saying how great things were was dismissive of their real concerns.
Meanwhile, Trump latched onto their fears and concerns. Yeah, his policies are idiotic, and millions will suffer and be in worse shape. But when they said they couldn’t pay the mortgage or buy groceries, he listened. The Democrats didn’t because they’ve abandoned the working class that should be their backbone.
Maybe they voted against the incumbent
I wouldn’t be so confident about assigning such motivation.
They haven’t been unanimous in the counties all those times.
So then the trend is getting reder with time then? I don’t see your point.
It’s not saying 100% of people always vote red. But the majority have for a VERY long time.
Yes. it got redder across the country this election.
But the point, for this population and this meme, is that they have consistently voting in the same people and the results they have received are similarly consistent, and they keep voting that way.
Yes broadly there’s been a “vote out the incumbent”, but this illustrates why that’s misguided, as it illustrates the different results of two states with consistent policies for each party.
Not even just consistently, the person accidentally made the point for them that they’ve actually gotten more red over that time. So they’ve somehow kept convincing more people to vote for them despite them never doing a thing to help them.
Again, not really sure what point your trying to make?
When an entire country shifts away from a party, it means the party is doing something to drive them away. Trump is the worst candidate in the history of the country, yet he’s won 2 elections. Why is that?
It’s because the Dems have abandoned the economic policies that formed the heart of their party and lost the working class vote they’ve relied upon since the Depression.
Well that and the fact Trump has a cult of personality that will only disappear when he dies.
In that one case, they’re a pretty consistent electorate. The general sentiment across America and around the globe since the post-pandemic inflation crisis began has been anti incumbent, which is why we see a lot of changed governments and populist uprisings now.
Sounds like making an avg citizen feel heard was the Trump card
The audacity!
if living in russia taught me anything, people in distress reduce themselves (and got reduced) to the most basic questions, like who is to blame, and populists have them like a piece of cake.
Most vatniks, not unlike MAGAs, don’t have answers to many questions, they want to be left alone to manage the hole they happened to be born into, and the promise of a candidate or ideology that does just that or even paints their quest as a herioic one, or a sacred sacrifice, would win again and again until there is someone to work with that and educate them.
They are used to live in shit and depend on themselves, don’t know anything better and become pretty jealous if others get that. Others having it worse, especially their ‘enemies’, kinda makes their own living more bearable. Their struggle is a downpainment for a mission of punishing the unworthy ones.
When a person is downscaled to that childish level of consciousness it’s impossible to reach them with rhetorics that don’t directly benefit them.
As long as they continue to be like that and their thoughts are unchallenged, they’d always vote maga.
Really well said
And as they continue to vote against their own interests it becomes a self-perpetuating system.
If you look at the impacts to their lives from the Clinton presidency, it is understandable that they would think that Democracts are not necessarily working in their interests.
Clinton really did fuck us over, though I guess the Bosnians like him.
Well lets hope we can correct course and make changes, unless Trump triggers a civil war or removes too much load bearing duck tape from the federal government and it more or less implodes
I haven’t seen an analysis from your perspective before. Lines up very well with my experience from the Southern US.
Another way to view this is that the poor are voting republican now. Trump won those making less than $100,000 handedly while Harris won those making above. Probably because he’s offering them a solution to there problems, deport the immigrants and bring manufacturing back. His plan is dumb and won’t work but at least he’s putting something forward unlike Harris who says everything will stay the same.
The democrats are slowly becoming the party of the out of touch elite, and memes like this don’t help. The democrats need to be putting forward solutions to those problems, and trump has shown it doesn’t matter if they’re viable or will actually help. If these “dumb poor people are rubes who will fall for anything” give them something to fall for. Say your going to tax the billionaires at 50% and use that money to pay for Healthcare and child care, don’t cozy up to them so you can raise another billion dollars to lose another election .
bring manufacturing back. … unlike Harris who says everything will stay the same…. The democrats need to be putting forward solutions to those problems
Perhaps like the CHIPS act or IRA? Instead of demogoguing, democrats followed through with actual investment in manufacturing, unionism, infrastructure. Supposedly 80% of that manufacturing investment went to red states
Is this one of these scenarios where people are too impatient with the time it takes to get a factory off the ground, so votes out the group making that investment over someone who’s “good for business” or at least taking credit ?
Yeah, but what about the vibes, man?
Probably because he’s offering them a solution to there problems, deport the immigrants and bring manufacturing back. His plan is dumb and won’t work but at least he’s putting something forward unlike Harris who says everything will stay the same.
This is exactly what I was pointing out to my friends. Every one of us are making six figures, and could not understand why anybody would vote Trump.
And I asked them how many people in their lives are poor, living paycheck to paycheck. I have family members who are working two or three jobs to get by. All the work Biden did is not being seen or recognized by them.
Are they are under-educated yokels? Are they morons for not keeping up with politics? You can call them what ever you want. Theyre still a voter.
Face it: what they’re hearing from Democrats vs what they’re hearing from Trump are pretty clear cut and we can stay in this echo chamber all we want on Lemmy. Those folks aren’t listening to us. They’re just trying to survive and will vote accordingly.
Six figures? Lucky you.
That’s like an average cali salary man. You gotta pump those numbers up
California has one of the highest CoL’s in the country. 51% of Americans made $15k or less in 2021.
Say your going to tax the billionaires at 50% and use that money to pay for Healthcare and child care, don’t cozy up to them so you can raise another billion dollars to lose another election .
That was basically Harris’ tax plan.
What Would Kamala Harris’s Tax Plans Mean For You? | Kiplinger - https://www.kiplinger.com/taxes/kamala-harriss-tax-plans-2024
It doesn’t matter what your platform is if it’s not communicated effectively to the median voter
Many of those people will inexplicably be against a 50% tax on billionaires for two reasons: 1) they have no concept of how progressive tax brackets work, and think that means they’d be taking literally half that person’s wealth, and 2) they believe that one day they could be in that situation, and when they are, they sure as shit won’t want to pay half of their wealth! (spoiler alert: they won’t)
And until we can change this type of thinking, we will never make those people pay their fair share.
This is what decades of American Exceptionalism, and Rugged Individualism, does to a nation; Empathy dies, and it becomes every man for themselves.
How do you communicate effectively to someone with their fingers in their ears screaming nananananananana? Please advise, oh political oracle.
Trump seemed to get through.
Democrats are forbidden by their patrons from using too much populist rhetoric. That’s the number one reason why they fail to connect with what has become a very populist country, thanks to decades of wealth transfer to the top.
Bernie used populist language and the Democratic establishment pulled out all the stops to give us “anybody but Bernie”. Now we are living the consequences.
So basically you lie to them and tell them what they want to hear? Stoke fear of “the others” among them to keep them scared and angry?
Yeah, no, I’m good.
Is that what you think Bernie does?
People are scared and angry already. Not everyone has the financial stability you apparently do. Republicans focus that fear on the powerless. Democrats pretend it’s not there. You can’t respond to struggling families with “the economy is great!”
What’s neat is that you appear to have internalized the conservative view of the Democratic machine in this country. They are completely incompetent…but also such shadowy and powerful figures they control what everyone says and does and control who votes for who…except when it comes to republicans who these scary shadowy figures are unable to competently manipulate ever…
If you want to argue today that the Democrats aren’t failures at fighting Republicans and specifically Trump, I would love to hear that argument.
There was nothing “shadowy” about the “anybody but Bernie” effort in 2020. They might have preferred it to be quieter, but I think just about every relevant detail of that scheme leaked, and it played out quite transparently. Are you arguing that it didn’t happen?
It’s not as much about competence as it is about perspective. The Democratic establishment is somewhat competently running strategies that are well suited for the 90s but completely out of touch with where voters are today.
You go on Joe Rogan for one. Kamala ran the last presidential campaign that will ever rely so heavily on the legacy media apparatus. This whole cycle proved that they are only broadcasting to themselves and real people are elsewhere on podcasts, twitter and YT.
She was on traditional media? I guess I wasn’t there to see either candidate. I only saw both online
She did go on Call Her Daddy.
With all the fucking TV ads and mailers the campaign spent billions on. If the average voters is just covering there ears then why spend so much on advertising or why even campaign at all? Yeah some people are like that but they’re deep in the maga cult, there’s still a large amount of people open to both sides if the messaging is right that decided this election. Harris’ messaging didn’t work though.
I mean the marketing was effective. A lot of people including Donald trump thought he was going to lose. Just not effective at getting people who support Biden to get off their ass.
Ah yes, now that you made fun of the prior commenter, we have convinced the world and now Kamala is president?
Bernie is fucking right.
?
You lumped a huge percentage of people as putting their fingers in their ears.
Maga is going to vote maga. And there’s a huge chunk that didn’t vote or were surprised Biden dropped out. Those folks didn’t put their fingers in their ears. Like Bernie said, they were ignored.
People who were surprised 5 months after Biden dropped out didn’t have their fingers in their ears in your version of the world? I think you and I mean very different things by that phrase.
Who do you think the people putting their fingers in their ears are, in this case?
Check out leopards eating faces for the next few years…those people, whether it’s moms surprised the education department is again going to punish their kids, Muslims surprised trump hates Muslims and wants them eradicated, EV company owners who think being allowed to support means being part of the narcissists inner circle, Latinos shocked that their friends or family members there illegally won’t get special protections no matter how many times McCarthy rears his head.
“EV company owners” aside, most voters in this country just want something to change, and they’ll vote for whoever promises the most of it. Harris’ campaign didn’t do anything nor promise anything that resonated, and practically everything she said ended up morphing into her highly-rehearsed stump speech. No talks about Medicare for All, no talks about the minimum wage, no talks about legalizing weed, and kowtowing to the right on border policy by accepting the ‘crisis’ framing. Harris also failed to address the situation in Gaza in a way that mattered, even though it was a major issue for undecided voters in key states like Michigan. Over 100,000 Democratic primary voters there cast an uncommitted vote over Biden’s handling of Israel and Gaza, which is more than the margin by which she lost the state.
The right took advantage of this. An EV company owner paid a PAC to distribute ostensibly pro-Harris pamphlets in predominantly Arab neighborhoods in Michigan saying she was the most pro-Israel candidate on the ballot. The right helped put abortion rights directly on the state ballots as propositions, letting people believe the choice could be separated from who they voted for (see Florida, where the proposition lost at 57% support when the state voted roughly the same percentage for ol Don).
Harris had a potential base on the progressive left, but the DNC insisted on tweaking her campaign to try to win over right-moderates. That doesn’t work anymore, precisely for the “sticking fingers in ears” attitude you mentioned from right-wing voters. It’s asinine for the DNC to continue to try and appeal to them, when the median Republican voter thinks Democrats are agents of a satanic agenda. Regardless, the message the DNC seems to have gotten from Nov 5 was that they lost this election because they failed to move to the right hard enough. The ratchet effect continues.
As a side note, I know several trumpets who would’ve voted for Sanders in 2016 were he the Democratic nominee, and would’ve voted for Walz even this election were he the main guy on the 2024 presidential ticket. Such people are not very coherent ideologically, they just want someone in who has big ideas.
Unfortunately, it’s just not enough to be “not the other guy”, even if the other guy is a convicted felon, rapist, and just all-around a downright awful human being.
edit: grammar and wording in a couple spots
And yet. Manufacturing was down under trump in 2016 even before covid hit and under Biden manufacturing is the highest it’s been in decades.
The Democrats must be doing something right, if their states have better everything.
Maybe if the Republicans would listen to us, we could all have the best schools and hospitals.
They don’t have better retention rates.
CA, NY, IL and MA are all in the top 5 for states that have the most people leaving.
TX, FL, NC and AZ are attracting the most people.
Massachusetts has priced out average people. If you aren’t the inheritor of some generational wealth you have a better chance of being upwardly mobile elsewhere.
That really has mostly to do with the high cost of living. And it’s going to be high in an area inhabited by businesses on the cutting edge of technology. Those jobs have high wages because they need highly educated people, and highly educated people come from the best universities in the country, many of which are in Boston, and Cambridge. Not to mention the great schools in commuter range in Providence and Worcester.
Red states don’t have higher education, and they don’t have innovative industry, so they don’t have the population density issues that blue states have.
Maybe if red states had these things, they’d have a high cost of living, too.
Most of the people fleeing MA for those states are working remotely for their companies still in MA. Mostly DINKS and young (primarily male) single professionals that don’t really have public education or healthcare as any sort of immediate concern. That’s gonna lead to problems when the average age of red state populations inverts itself. Better make sure that they can’t not have babies.
This is due to rent gouging, not democrats.
You can’t blame “rent gouging” without blaming the government for condoning it and setting up the conditions that encourage it.
The cost of living in blue states is absolutely due to city/state level Democrats. Democrats write the zoning laws. Democrats decide the tax laws. Democrats build the infrastructure and public transportation. Democrats also vote down rent control and affordable housing requirements.
Red states are controlled by rich Republicans. Blue states are controlled by rich Democrats. Sure, Republican rule makes Oklahoma the shit hole that it is. But don’t try to give Democrats a pass for making Massachusetts as expensive as it is.
No, it’s from rental agencies that do as they please out of greed. They don’t condition anything, they just don’t do anything about it.
they just don’t do anything about it.
Even after ignoring everything I said, you still admit I’m right. If the local government doesn’t do anything about it, who is supposed to?
Sure bud.
he also proposed nuking a hurricane…
but yes, democratic leaders have left us, so it’s easy to say both sides are corrupt, especially as long as insider trading and conflicts of interest are OK to them.
So according to you it’s worse to acknowledge we can’t go back in time than to lie to people and promise that which we (in the 3rd party pov sense, meaning NYC republicans) actively subvert every day? One would have to be exceptionally stupid and stubbornly uninformed to believe this is reasonable.
No, the point is to come up with solutions, ANY solutions. Democrats aren’t even in the game, so the other guy gets to eat the pieces.
The solution proposed was stop mining coal and learn to make modern devices, I think.
That’s like saying you’ll fix unemployment by just getting people jobs! Great… How?
