The countries you mention with effective national health care systems are mostly mono-ethnic and can’t really be compared to a multiracial society like the U.S. Americans of European descent actually have lifespans close to Europeans. The U.S spent eight percent of GNP in 1960 on medical care compared to sixteen percent currently. The U.S. certainly had a more free market economy then than now so you can’t say a free market economy causes high health care costs.

Here’s another thought: there are many examples through the world of national health care policies that work pretty well. Japan, Singapore, Norway, etc. And sure, there are examples of national health plans that don’t work so well – but that is true of ANYTHING that is in general a good idea. And most of these (like England) have been deliberately sabotaged by people with a political agenda.

And yet: there are ZERO effective and affordable modern health care systems based purely on market forces (no, the 19th century USA does not count). The current US system is a hot mess and wildly expensive. There are no better examples.

So given that national health care systems can be made to work pretty well, and there is currently no real-world evidence that a modern system of medicine can be made to work using purely private insurance, surely basic conservatism should give the nod to national health insurance plans.

No way to defeat corporate propaganda? Probably not in the way most people assume rebellions need to be successful. Using the Google you’ll hit insurance, pharm – all the underwritten propaganda, an appeal to the free market and you’ll also find a withering list of single payer vapor organizations.

These are much worse than the death panel or horror-of-Canadian-health-care-stories – They represent an insidious prevention of a superior healthcare system by being the controlled opposition. If you’re reading anything, it is typically someone you believe in.

The Counterpunchers, Wendell Potter, Amy Goodman, the CIA spooks we all know and love et al. These noisemakers are the most effective in making sure the US never gets a single payer system. They don’t really question anything, especially the status quo. Appearances are carefully created to be deceiving, that’s all that matters. More formally, our illegitimate system of fraudlent representation routinely guarantees a kind of defeat. This was always Ralph Nader’s purpose, to disempower and disable to maintain security of the Republic.

Don’t use the Google as much, use first hand accounts of people you know. It will blow your mind how much the web is mostly a propaganda truncheon when it comes to all things health care.

There is more than something amiss in our health care system, but this article only makes allegations and assertions and provides no reference links to source material. This is no way to convince the growing body of skeptical believers that a universal national health care system will be better than our current stinking system.

I would like to decide for myself if your position is warranted from the evidence.

The Swiss must pay particular attention to the US demand for security through militarism. Useful idiots will maintain how dependent the Swiss are on these security needs. Morever, the economic threats that have always existed – if the Swiss don’t devote attention and resources as the US sees fit damaging things will happen – are fading but not without a fake war on terror doing everything it can to maintain the status quo.

The eventual destruction of socially redeemable systems (including superior health care) is primed by forcing overwhelming immigration from war zones into countries that are unable to adequately plan for and accomodate the influx, but otherwise would be without the overwhelming effort by the US to destroy these abilities.

The Empire used to toast the Swiss – frugal, neutral (unless it was the Nazis) and gold backed.

Regular screenings are justified, and for some populations, the annual once-over is not only worthwhile, but necessary. This is one of those flammability of gasoline things, not too much debate about it.

How to brush your teeth correctly!

I have seen advertizing of toothpastes.
I did see people brushing their teeth.
I did see people brushing their teeth in movies.
All were done incorrectly.

(So I will give you benefit of my wisdom!)

here it is:
Wash your hands.
Take a tooth brush and wet the bristles.
Put the toothpaste on top of toothbrush bristles.
With your thumb push the toothpaste entirely into bristles.
Brush your teeth.

You do observe the difference!!!!

No, the difference is the working poor and the non-working poor. The Democrats don’t care if the poor are working or not. The Republicans want everything but them to be working poor with the non-working poor removed somehow.

Oh my! So many rocking hospitals? Coincidence?

My friend went to Florida on vacation.
He got a cold.
Went to see a doctor.
My friend is not a retard. He had a stomach reduction few months before. So he worried.
Doctor checked his throat, heartbeat, and breathing. Recommended over the counter drug.
My friend got the bill, for less than 10 minutes of doctors time: $600.

Indeed. But here is another angle.

The market is not a bad thing. Try to outlaw market forces at your peril (example: the old Soviet Union). But there are circumstances where a market simply cannot function, and health care is one of them.

Anybody who is sick or who has a sick child, is under duress. There cannot be a free market when you are under duress. Anyone who is taken unconscious or dazed to an emergency room cannot make informed decisions. Pricing of health care is opaque, as is the quality: without clear knowledge of costs and benefits, there can be no real market. Even highly educated doctors have trouble evaluating different treatment regimens outside their specialty: good luck for non-physicians. And nobody can know in advance when, or how, they will get sick. So should you pick the insurance plan that is better at cardiac disease, or the plan that is better at cancer? How can you know? And of course, in reality you can’t even know which plan is better at which disease in the first place. And when you get sick, you can’t change plans. It is madness to think that ‘the market’ will magically fix health care.

The free market (with a little modest regulation) works great for growing food, or making cars and computers, or grilling hamburgers, building houses, etc. It is simply the nature of the beast that health care does not jibe with classic market principles.

But then we know this already. That is why national defense is ‘socialized.’ Why not just let each citizen decide individually on what defense against foreign invaders they are willing to pay for? Madness! And roads: the old medieval system of private roads and bridges strangled the economy – because almost every bridge and road is a natural monopoly. A public system of roads has been shown over and over to be far more efficient than a for-profit system of toll-roads. Ditto for utilities like electricity and water.

So respect the market, but the market is not God. If a group of people living in an area freely agree to pool their resources for a common cause – be it defense, or roads, or health care, this is no more communism than a gated community charging for common area maintenance – as long as it is transparent, democratically agreed to, and procedures to fight corruption and make the common enterprises accountable are put in place.

I see that the Swiss have a system comparable to the Dutch, we just pay a lot more, some E 1300 a year per person.
Then there is that we must pay the first E 400 ourselves, except for visiting a GP.
Good health care is not cheap.

The apparent difference between the two groups is due to an epistemic illusion, a product of a defective way of understanding. They are virtually identical. Your own words support the idea that in reality we have just a one party system, functionally speaking.

But, you digress…

“Everybody needs health care.” True, everybody needs health care at some times in their life. The average person does not need to see a physician every year or even every five years during their peak healthy years – starting, say, at age 10 and going through age 50. Instead of spending a fortune on one of the “see a doctor today, tomorrow, and forever” health insurance schemes that most employers offer their employees to take advantage of the government not taxing that part of the employee’s salary, you could buy whatever kind of health insurance you want. If you fear that not seeing a physician regularly would cause you to develop a catastrophic illness (which I do not) you could use your own funds to buy such a policy without forcing people like myself to subsidize your decision.

Routine health procedures, such as the birth of a child, need not cost the outlandish prices demanded by physicians knowing exactly how much each insurance company pays toward them. Think too about the contradictions we continually hear from the medical profession about which drugs can or cannot be bought off the shelf. If birth control pills are as safe as we are always being told why are they not available without a prescription? Is not the true answer to that question lie in the fact that to get that prescription a perfectly healthy young woman needs to see a physician?

Somehow we “as a society” decided that we wouldn’t allow people to die in the streets because they couldn’t pay for medical care. Once laws are put in place mandating that hospitals treat everyone regardless of their ability to pay, socialized health care becomes inevitable. Since the poor cannot pay but are treated anyway, the rest of us have to cover their costs as well as our own. This means that, for the productive who have to pay, the value of medical care can never equal its cost. This leads to the whole cost-shifting infrastructure of private health insurance, while simultaneously making such a system non-viable.
Either cut loose the worthless and let them sink, or get used to socialized medicine. Those benefits that you worked your whole life to earn? They’re now being handed to some deadbeat who can’t be bothered to get a job. You are just a resource to be exploited for the benefit of “the less fortunate.” Yeah, “less fortunate” as if everything in life were determined by the vicissitudes of fortune – never by merit.

Health insurance in Switzerland is mandatory, but employers are never forced to pay for it. People with low incomes receive subsidies. Basic healthcare insurance coverage is determined by the state and the insurance companies who are required to offer it. Supplemental healthcare insurance allows entry into private clinics with private rooms, etc. It is much more expensive.

Another key difference between the Swiss system and most of the world is that health insurance is not the same as accident insurance. Employers provide accident insurance since most accidents happen on the job. This allows for a much clearer cost accounting where people with cancer are separately accounted for from people who broke their back on the job or in an accident. Automobile accidents are covered by automobile insurance.

Swiss insurance executives are scrutinized heavily and salaries are less than 1/10 of a US health insurance executive.

One big problem is hyper-expensive drugs used to subsidize Roche and Novartis and other Pharma companies.

The US is far too corrupt and splintered to be able implement a Swiss type system. However, it would be perfectly feasible for a smaller state to implement it (forget California or New York) if the federal government would set the states free to determine their own healthcare systems. That is not in the cards because single payer is about goyim control not goyim well being.

Besides, where is written in the US Constitution that the federal government gets to cram its yid-created system by the likes of Emmanuel and Gubler down the throats of US citizens?

“Nevertheless, the Swiss are increasingly unhappy with treating health care as a business, rather than a social good. A growing number find health care unaffordable and are failing to pay their premiums.The Swiss system is the third most expensive in the world primarily because the system is hijacked by the usual suspects even with the strong Government role. A better informed Switzerland will ultimately choose single payer.”

The Swiss clearly are not “increasingly unhappy”, they had a referendum on single payer a couple of years ago, and it was easily defeated. Since every Swiss is forced by the government to pay $450 a year to the cultural marxist SRF (Swiss radio and TV), the people were clearly not correctly informed on the true costs of Health Slavery or the referendum would have been defeated by about 90%.

Cultural Marxists and Useful Idiots love socialized health care, just look at the cesspool that Scandinavian man-hating feminists demanding free birth control and years of paid child leave financed by exorbitant VAT, Income and Wealth taxes extorted from their men have created.

Switzerland does not have the most expensive system, the US does. That 30,000 freeloading immigrants from Schengen area are refusing to pay their premiums has nothing to do with anything but Cultural Marxism.

Swiss Citizens with low incomes get their health insurance heavily subsidized, and if they are completely worthless basket cases then they can fall back on the towns where they are registered which are forced to provide the insurance for them.

“The US is the only developed country relying on a private, for-profit insurance system to fund and deliver medical care for its working age population.”
Not true…
Almost EVERY developed and even third-world countries have “supplemental insurance” available that in almost all cases is needed in order to receive decent “health care”… the “public systems” are almost always restricted as to types of medications and even medical specialties.

The Democrats depend on having plenty of people who can vote but never contribute to society. The Republicans depend on having so many people who make so little that they can never contribute to society. Both of these groups will have to be carried by the other 25% of the country. What do you think the likelihood of that is?

I just had an interesting little stay in the hospital that highlights much that is wrong with our healthcare system.

I was given a drug to control high blood pressure. It wasn’t working as well as expected so a stronger version from the same family of drugs was substituted. I was having mini episoides of adverse effects to the drug but kept taking it. I had a major episode and went to the ER with chest pains and expanding pains into the shoulder similar to a myocardial infarction.

The EKG and blood tests were negative for infarction but the EKG did show a possible constriction of the left side arteries. I was kept overnight and the pain did not completely go away. They scheduled me for a LEXY imaging test to check the arteries.

While under their care, I did not recieve my normal medication to control my atrial fibrillation problem that I have had since 31 when I was an exercise fanatic. Just as I was being prepped for the LEXY test, I went into atrial fibrillation. They couldn’t do the test with my heart beating that fast.

The cardiologist tried to get me back to sinus rhythm using drugs which I have never before taken. I asked why didn’t they used the medication I told them I was taking when they admitted me and they said they would but it was not in the hospital’s formulary. Their drug did not work and they put me on a drip they said would slow the heart rate down and convert me. I was on that drip for over a day and finally converted just before taking the LEXY test the next day.

So the original problem was due to a drug approved by the FDA administered by a licensed doctor. The care in the hospital may have contributed to the atrial fibrillation as well. The care there likely cost me another full day in the cardiac ward.

Luckily I had Obamacare. But even with that I am out at least 6500 dollars and the bill from the hospital was likely 30-40K knocked down to 8500 by the insurance company. The hospital had the chutzpah to send me an “estimate” asking me to pay them now before I get all the paperwork from the insurance company. They also let me know that this does not include the doctors, radiologists,… and could be billed separately.

None of those providers told me they did or did not take my insurance. I could be billed for the full amount by them even though they made no effort to make sure they were part of my insurance umbrella which I told the hospital “If you don’t take this take me somewhere else” when I was admitted.

Technically this does not rise to malpractice even though I should not have to pay for a lot of this. This is the problem, you have to pay for everything they do, even if it is worthless.

oh, so, that was another bullshit attempt trying to disparage the single payer system

ACA got butchered for 2 years before a version of it was passed. if I remember correctly, it was the version mostly written by insurance companies.

wonder when usa will have a single payer system. hell, even china have insurance for their retirees now. it covers 70% of everything.

“Most of us do not need health insurance, except for rare catastrophic emergencies”

Everybody needs health care, insurance not so much. The catastrophic emergency can typically follow not having access to health care. I’m not referring only to cancer or heart attacks. Your issue is the same as any advocate of single payer and surprisingly Karl Denniger. Everybody in, nobody out and you can put your wallet away.

Everything else is the consequence of poor habits such as improper hygiene & cleaning, poor food safety practices, consumption of carbohydrates and industrial seed oils, failing to lift weights, and not getting enough sun.

Like all those whining sick fags at the Shriner’s Hospitals?

A lot of medical problems come from simply living past 65. We are also finding out a lot of diseases are congenital. I saw a show where it was determined that Elvis Presley had a genetic predisposition to cardiac hypertrophy. He didn’t know it and continued to ignore the symptoms such as his massive sweating on stage. With proper care he would likely have lived well into his 70s.

Go to Forbes, they write glittering generalities. Compelling, ideologically based blather that at one point implied Obamacare and LaMal are the same. Stale corporate propaganda has destroyed health care. Much as one would expect in an imperial backwater like the United States.

Obamacare is not a version of LaMal. The Swiss system is vastly superior to Obamacare, which isn’t saying too much. An example of this superiority is forbiding insurers from making a profit from the sale of the mandatory package and imposing a system of risk equalization.

Nevertheless, the Swiss are increasingly unhappy with treating health care as a business, rather than a social good. A growing number find health care unaffordable and are failing to pay their premiums.The Swiss system is the third most expensive in the world primarily because the system is hijacked by the usual suspects even with the strong Government role. A better informed Switzerland will ultimately choose single payer.

can that system be emulated by the usa? and how fine is it? is it affordable? how? what is coverage for the population? 100%?

details bro

“The US is the only developed country relying on a private, for-profit insurance system to fund and deliver medical care for its working age population.”

Switzerland has a private, for profit health insurance system that is arguably the finest on the planet. Clearly James Petras is not only an ignorant fool, he is clearly a communist liar.

As the cultural marxists parade around the planet destorying all Goyim health care, their useful idiots love to spew lies about how the only solution is letting the government have complete control over your health.

Last week the Honolulu police chief announced that he was going to grab all the guns of anyone using MEDICAL marijuana. Next stop medical users of: valium, prozac, ambien, vicodin, etc. etc. Next stop after that: Grab their drivers licenses. And how about “keeping your doctor” and all those other great lies from asshats like Petras?

” Private capitalist employers and insurance companies continue to benefit from the epidemic of pre-mature deaths of their former employees: Pension costs and health care liabilities are slashed because of the decreasing life expectancy – Wall Street is jubilant. ”

A book was written on the Clinton effort to introduce decent health care for every USA citizen.
The book, cannot find it since a long time, asked the question why it is possible for European countries to provide decent healthcare for any citizen at some eleven % of national income, while the USA cannot at seventeen %.

The answer is quite simple, European health care is not for profit.
Health care is not insurance, it is a solidarity system in which anyone pays the same, if one needs care or not.
Incomes of doctors, nurses etc. are regulated, as well as incomes of pharmacists.
Hospitals do not make profits, they are just balancing their budgets.
What we cannot regulate is costs of medicine, drugs.
The expensive ones have been developed abroad.
This problem gets more and more political attention, voices are heard to abolish patent rights.

Long ago I discussed all this with a USA citizen, he wrote to me that such a system is unthinkable in the USA.
I fear it is.
And so in the USA the poor die early.

We do have ever increasing life expectancy, this does create financial problems, there is no doubt about it.
And this inceased life expectancy leads to euthanasia, logically.
The Netherlands seems to be one of the few countries where euthanasia has been legalised.
Not for financial reasons, just to prevent unnecessary suffering.
Few people seem to understand that the logical result of medical treatments to prolong life ever more must be that some people no longer find life worth living.

In order to get euthanasia one must have filed a statement with one’s GP, the GP must judge that it is appropriate, and a second opinion doctor must approve.
Afterwards a commission judges any case against regulations.

I am old and ill, my statement is with my GP since nearly three years.
The illnes cannot be cured, when treatments stop being effective, nobody knows, months, a few years.
I’m glad to live in a country that makes it possible to end my life when it is no longer worth living.

Wrong. According to sources, and by sources I mean Wikipedia, Medicare and Medicaid are slightly less than all military expenditures (28% and 31%).

Medicare and Medicaid combined cost $906bn.

And this doesn’t include state level Medicaid spending or Obamacare spending.

Department of Defense’s 2016 budget was $534bn. You can add non-Pentagon defense spending (DoE nuclear weapons, Dept of Veterans Affairs, etc.) and you still get to $906bn.

You sure about that? From here, we get: “The U.S. military budget is $824.6 billion. That’s the budget for Fiscal Year 2018 which covers the period October 1, 2017 through September 30, 2018.” there are some quibbling dollar amounts in there (FBI?), but eliminate them and you get about 800 Billion. That’s about 4% of GDP. Don’t forget that there is debt piled up for defense expenditures, as when Reagan raised defense spending to 7% of GDP. “Net interest payments on the debt are estimated to total $276.2 billion this fiscal year, or 6.8% of all federal outlays.” Could we assign $140Bln of the interest paid to debt incurred for “defense?” Then you’re talking pretty much 5% of GDP.

The Pentagon itself has a budget under $600bn.

The higher figures come from including a few other things, such as:

*Department of Energy, which operates nuclear weapons labs
*Supplementary war funding not part of the normal defense budget
*Department of Veterans’ Affairs
*Department of Homeland Security on occasion

So yes, perhaps we get to 4% of GDP. That doesn’t mean we can’t afford a national medical service if we want one, nor does it mean Europe can’t afford higher defense spending. During the Cold War defense budgets in European countries were much higher as a share of GDP than today (4.4% in the UK under Thatcher for instance).

Many Americans operate under the patriotard delusion that Europe is only able to afford its social insurance programs because of the US military. The truth is they afford them through taxes.

Russia spends 4.5% of GDP on defense and has a national medical service. They also have a 13% flat income tax.

Israel spends 5.2% of GDP on defense and has a national medical service.

Yeah, more like induced is the better term. The fat will be largely Omega-6, having come from grain, instead of Omega-3, from grass. Either way, I’ve stopped eating it.

Grain fed beef has less omega 6 fatty acid than any kind of chicken or pork. It’s not an issue worth worrying about.

Many thanks for suggesting that folks read Karl Denninger on health care. He is the best mind on the economics of the medical system in the U.S. that I have found.

Most of us do not need health insurance, except for rare catastrophic emergencies. When I think of how much money went into health insurance for my family while I was working (retired now) that could have been paid directly to me and then I could have chosen an insurance plan sensible for us as a family (one that covered only catastrophic events) I despair.

I am 80 years old and know quite a few people my age and older. In my group, I am the only one who stays away from physicians. I have not had a physical exam since my younger son was born 50 years ago – and I remain the healthiest by far. I never took HRT during menopause, making me unique. I have never had a mammography. In other words by staying away from the medical establishment I avoided all the procedures that subsequently we learned cause more harm than good. You might notice that no one has calculated the total cost of such procedures. The cost never figures in press coverage of medical matters.

It seems to me that Medicare has led to my whole generation being constantly worried about their health and continually going from specialist to specialist making sure that they are getting every single “benefit” that they are “entitled to” under the law.

For example, I have a friend in her 90s who keeps track of how many hours of physical therapy she is “covered” for under Medicare. When she has received the annual limit she complains bitterly that she is no longer seen by the therapist. As she is quite comfortable financially I suggested that she pay for some additional hours out of her own pocket. She looked at me as if I were out of my mind.

If you want to see the mind-set that results from government-paid medical treatment just ask an elderly relative how much a recently received treatment costs. They will tell you that it did not cost anything – but of course that is not true. When you do not pay for something yourself you have no interest in the cost of anything.

I intend to call on the medical profession whenever I need help. Some years ago I fell and fractured my wrist. I received superlative care at the local hospital, for which I will remain continually grateful. But I have no intention of ever visiting a physician again unless something else untoward occurs, despite the fact that my previous employer pays for excellent medical insurance over and above what Medicare covers.

A suggestion. There is a group known as the Cochrane Collaboration in the UK that does meta-analyses of clinical trials whose website is well-worth visiting should you want to know whether a routine medical procedure really has value. Most do not.

But they spend less for equivalent/comparable healthcare outcomes.

Can you not grasp the significance of this fact?

Wow! This site is getting jammed a lot. Last night　url not found in Dn seruer.
Never seen that bfore.

Now, i was posting on-topic, unlike most others in the thread, and post is suddenly to vanishing and to be irrecoverable.

My experience with the Canadian healthcare system was quite different. I suggest if this should happen again call an ambulance, they are given priority in the hospital emergency dept. I had a massive back pain at home around 8:00 pm, my wife called an ambulance, which arrived in about 15 minutes. They put me in the ambulance and made tests to decide which hospital to take me to. After the ECG they opted for the heart institute (20 miles away). When we arrived the medical team were together and I went straight into the operating theatre. By 10:30 pm I had had an angioplasty and was sent to a ward. They made me stay for two days although I felt great and was ready to go home the next morning.

Maybe this level of service is not available in e very part of the country, but here in Ottawa the service is first class.

Healthcare in America is an asset-stripping industry, systematically changing America from a land of middle and working class to one of a propertyless underclass ruled by billionaire overlords.

Those who are working and insured are being squeezed out of prosperity. Those formerly solvent but now on Medicaid will see any assets they may have left to their children confiscated to pay for their care. Yes, Medicaid is only “free” for those with no assets, i.e. immigrants.

Medicare is slowly being degraded to be as useless for preventing bankruptcy as the rest of health insurance.

The Democrats, the party of the people, had the opportunity to instate a Public Option in Obamacare but refused. Leading the opposition to it was the Unions, who want to keep the current system in which healthcare is a benefit they provide to members.

The medical mafia is opposed to the Public Option, which would have made Medicare a governor on costs by providing a non-profit price anchor. If you liked your for-profit insurance, you could keep it.

The Public Option was a move against the insurers’ racketeering, something Congress allowed back when they promised that the free market unleashed would make care too cheap to meter. Yet a comparison of American costs that covers very few people adequately, and European costs, which prevents bankruptcy, show an enormous gap of pure profiteering instead.

This is overblown. US defense spending is 3.3% of GDP. European countries vary between 1-3%.

You sure about that? From here, we get: “The U.S. military budget is $824.6 billion. That’s the budget for Fiscal Year 2018 which covers the period October 1, 2017 through September 30, 2018.” there are some quibbling dollar amounts in there (FBI?), but eliminate them and you get about 800 Billion. That’s about 4% of GDP. Don’t forget that there is debt piled up for defense expenditures, as when Reagan raised defense spending to 7% of GDP. “Net interest payments on the debt are estimated to total $276.2 billion this fiscal year, or 6.8% of all federal outlays.” Could we assign $140Bln of the interest paid to debt incurred for “defense?” Then you’re talking pretty much 5% of GDP.

There is grassfed, raw milk cheese at my local health food grocer for $10 per pound. It is aged three years as well.
Ah, good. It seems it’s about the same then. I chose the first raw-milk, grass-fed example that came to mind.

EU farm subsidies total 400 billion Euros per year: https://epthinktank.eu/2016/07/20/how-the-eu-budget-is-spent-common-agricultural-policy/
I guess that’s why the higher quality food is so cheap where land is so expensive. That makes sense.

The marbling in feed lot beef is not “artificial”. That’s actual fat from the animal’s muscle tissue. There’s simply more fat than would be the case if the cattle were purely grassfed.
Yeah, more like induced is the better term. The fat will be largely Omega-6, having come from grain, instead of Omega-3, from grass. Either way, I’ve stopped eating it.

Healthcare expenditures far exceed defense spending in America as well. Medicare and Medicaid cost as much as national medical systems in other countries.
Yep. My guess is the Defense fat gets cut to support granny in coming years. We can pay for Medicare/Medicaid with the defense funding, or we can try to rule the world and cut medicare spending. Both cannot continue.

Healthcare expenditures far exceed defense spending in America as well.

Wrong. According to sources, and by sources I mean Wikipedia, Medicare and Medicaid are slightly less than all military expenditures (28% and 31%).

“Europe exists under the AMERICAN military “umbrella”. THIS one fact makes it possible for their socialist systems to exist.”

Bingo.

I’m looking at a hunk of grass-fed raw-milk mountain cheese bought in Italy that cost me €18.90 per kilo, about $10 a lb. pleasant ridge Reserve is a raw milk, grass-fed cheese from Wisconsin that costs about $25 a lb in my local market.

There is grassfed, raw milk cheese at my local health food grocer for $10 per pound. It is aged three years as well.

offee was about the same, excepting that I can buy roasted beans locally for about $5 a lb and I did not see anything that cheap there. For packaged, pre-ground, about the same.

Coffee is not grown in the EU or America (there may be some trivial cultivation in tropical territories) and thus is not subject to farm subsidies. The price is a genuine market price.

Mass-produced food that I would call feed would have to be cheaper in the USA. There are no fields of subsidized corn growing over there, and no industry stuffing cows with corn and antibiotics to make artificially marbled meat. My bet would be that supermarket beef costs a lot more over there, but I did not check prices. Of course, you’d have to compare grass-fed meat here to what is sold there since I doubt there are feedlots in the EU.

EU farm subsidies total 400 billion Euros per year: https://epthinktank.eu/2016/07/20/how-the-eu-budget-is-spent-common-agricultural-policy/

Feed lots are widespread in Europe.

Corn is not a cash crop in Europe, so cattle are instead fed other grains like wheat and barley in European feed lots.

The marbling in feed lot beef is not “artificial”. That’s actual fat from the animal’s muscle tissue. There’s simply more fat than would be the case if the cattle were purely grassfed.

Europe exists under the AMERICAN military “umbrella”. THIS one fact makes it possible for their socialist systems to exist.

This is overblown. US defense spending is 3.3% of GDP. European countries vary between 1-3%.

Healthcare expenditures far exceed defense spending in America as well. Medicare and Medicaid cost as much as national medical systems in other countries.

And I’m not too sure our defense “umbrella” is protecting Europe from anything. The Warsaw Pact dissolved a generation ago.

Blighty agrees, on the whole.
US, please concentrate on making the US impregnable for the 21st century, not fiddling about, bleeding cash in every scruffy little 20th century troublespot on the planet. Leave the troublemakers to their neighbors.
Oh and can the Jerries and the Iranians be allowed their own nukes now please? It’s only fair, we’ve got a few, and so have the Frogs.

Obamacare is an ugly hybrid monster, neither fully socialist nor capitalist.

European countries and Israel can afford to provide health care (and higher education) because US citizens pay for the national defense of these other nations.

The US will not be able to provide basic healthcare for workers until it takes back the federal budget from the military-industrial complex. To make progress we are simply going to have to end our love affair with war and hegemony.

The indispensable nation will never be able to afford a national health system.

Rents, business rates, an innumerable swarm of obscure permits, regulations and (often “green”) taxes which all need money or (often cash-in-hand/under-the-table shhhhh) labor thrown at them, constantly. That, and parking/”congestion” charges meaning it would be more efficient to have the stuff brought in by pack-mule from Hampshire or somewhere.

After dealing with all the rent-seeking, I’m always surprised they have time or funds to cook anything at all. Catering, in That London, is very much not a license to print money, unless your clientele is Inner Party politicians, journos and their expense-account corporate cronies.

Right. The US needs to immediately reduce military spending that is financed by other countries. Scale it way back and end the free
ride once and for all.

Columnist John Myers, a Canadian who often visits the United States wrote this about the Canadian vs. American health care system:

United States: “My wife picked me up from the pool and took me to Rockwood Clinic. In minutes, I had a cardiologist hooking me up to an EKG machine and a nurse giving me an aspirin and testing my blood to see if I was having a heart attack. I got the results while I was there and was told nothing to worry about. I was suffering tachycardia, which is when the heart beats dangerously fast.”

Canada: “I couldn’t catch my breath, so my wife rushed me to the emergency room at the Rockyview General Hospital. Even as I gasped for air, the triage nurse would not look at me. When my wife, who had once worked at that hospital, complained, she was told that the emergency room was ‘very busy.’

“I didn’t want to die on some cot in a hallway. And that kind of thing happens too often in Canada. In Winnipeg, Manitoba, a man named Brian Sinclair died during his 34-hour wait to see a doctor at an emergency health clinic. The medical examiner said that he had been dead for a couple hours before the clinic staff even noticed him.

“Because of such stories and my own personal experiences with socialized medicine I begged my wife to take me home. Once she measured my pulse at a reasonable 110 beats per minute, she did take me home. I continued to improve throughout the night. The next morning, we lined up for two hours at a nearby doctor’s clinic. I was one of the 60 or 70 patients the doctor would see that day. The good news is that the doctor said my heart seems to be ‘OK,’ whatever that means. And he gave me an appointment to go see a cardiologist — in February”

This took place in September, and an example of what we Americans will soon be subjected to. Anyone who says otherwise needs to explain how it’s going to work when 40 million new recipients of Obamacare come into the system without an attendant rise in doctors. He or she needs to explain how there WON’T be rationing of health care. You will be standing in long lines behind the third world to receive American health care.
How’s that Hope and Change working out for you Obama voters now?

As a Canadian, I don’t think my country’s health care system is really that good at all. It’s harder and harder to get health care that is ‘free’. If I want to see a dentist, I can see one tomorrow, but I pay either out-of-pocket or via private insurance coverage. If I want to see a doctor (which unlike a dentist is ‘free’), I have no choice but to go to a walk-in medical clinic and wait hours for a surly doctor who doesn’t even listen to me and ushers me out as fast as he/she can. Contrast this with a visit to the dentist, who is invariably chatty and pleasant and provides top-quality care. That’s what free health care is about – hardly anything is free, and getting that which is free is invariably not a pleasant experience to go through at all!

A relative of mine in Canada died while waiting for his chemotherapy to begin. As in waiting months for the treatment to start after his diagnosis. Besides, the media in the US and Canada simply post poll information that’s made up – “adjusted” – in many cases. I know this from having actually worked as a television news writer for several years. I was just a kid, and thank heaven I woke up and made a run for it. The “news directors” all seemed to come from the same mold; fat, messy hair, grimy beard, slovenly, Marxist to the core, self-deceptive hate filled red diaper babies from New York. And when I say hate, I mean an easily discernible hatred of Whites, America, and the West in general. Self satisfied pigs, all of them. Tom Wolfe would have had a field day watching what went on.

Europe exists under the AMERICAN military “umbrella”. THIS one fact makes it possible for their socialist systems to exist.

Switzerland was more expensive, or as expensive, as New York. No question about it, but that was 2015.

We ate out regularly this summer in London’s West End, sit-down restaurants albeit not Le CordonBleu type places. Generically middle- to upper-middle-class places. London entrees were regularly in the 10s and lower 20s of pounds; with the pound at the time about $1.2, it worked out to less than NYC prices for food in restaurants, about 75%. This greatly surprised me as I expected London to be 25-33% more than NYC.

I didn’t compare much on grocery food, lacking kitchen facilities. Of course, the exquisite hams of Europe were cheaper over there, and cheese also cost less. I’m looking at a hunk of grass-fed raw-milk mountain cheese bought in Italy that cost me €18.90 per kilo, about $10 a lb. pleasant ridge Reserve is a raw milk, grass-fed cheese from Wisconsin that costs about $25 a lb in my local market. Chocolate cost about the same for the same brands we could get in the USA. Coffee was about the same, excepting that I can buy roasted beans locally for about $5 a lb and I did not see anything that cheap there. For packaged, pre-ground, about the same.

Mass-produced food that I would call feed would have to be cheaper in the USA. There are no fields of subsidized corn growing over there, and no industry stuffing cows with corn and antibiotics to make artificially marbled meat. My bet would be that supermarket beef costs a lot more over there, but I did not check prices. Of course, you’d have to compare grass-fed meat here to what is sold there since I doubt there are feedlots in the EU.

In sum: Italy and London SHOULD be more expensive, but aren’t at present. Perhaps this is because the dollar is going to collapse, or US prices are going to go down. It strikes me as similar to what friends reported in the early 80s when Reagan’s tax cuts and deficits caused a massive inflow to the USA and drove the dollar sky high against the franc, mark, etc. maybe the same effect now.

Governments of countries with National Healthcare Systems spend relatively little on their Military. Their populations if asked to whether to spend defence or healthcare always opt for healthcare. What would the American people choose if asked the same question? If they chose a National Healthcare System the world would be a better and safer place.

You obviously didn’t visit Switzerland (or London, if I can believe reports). And there’s no comparison to how much more Europeans pay for food in the grocery store.

basically if you are a retired middle class, if you ever need some big medical care, you would probably go bankrupt if you have no insurance(very few have this besides a few grandfather pensions) or if there is a cap. the govt would force you to sell everything before it decides to help you. even though you have been a good, tax paying citizen all your life. without medicare for the elderly, all middle class retirees would get fucked with just a single big health problem.

that is usa.

Thanks for the thoughtful overview. Wine really was the most dramatic difference in price. It would make sense that the Nordic countries, with their ridiculously high alcohol taxes, would not be cheap on wine or spirits.

That having been said, I first noticed the restaurant disparity in London in June, which shocked me because London is even more expensive than NY. We spent about 75% for comparable meals, though London was more expensive than Italy.

It’s depressing to read of medical costs going up in Europe. I have to agree with most of your evaluations.

Read Market Ticker; monopolies ruin anything.

https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-perils-of-hospital-consolidation

This suggests trust-busting should be applied to the hospital sector.

If I recall correctly, this is something Karl Denniger aggressively supports.

Incidentally in the United Kingdom it is very easy to get price quotes for medical procedures from private clinics (most of the state-run NHS services are free at the point of delivery).

See here for instance (scroll down to “Pricing”): https://www.bmihealthcare.co.uk/treatments/orthopaedic-surgery/knee-arthroscopy

When I telephoned the local hospital (and there is only one) and asked for a price quote on blood work (knew exactly what tests I wanted), not only would they not tell me but they informed me I had to schedule a doctor’s appointment and that the doctor would order any blood tests he considered necessary.

I ended up instead ordering tests from a company outside of the formal healthcare system. I was able to do this online and all prices were clearly posted.

As they are outside of the system, I was unable to use my health “insurance”–not even my Health Savings Account (only works on merchant terminals which code for medical). I also need to drive 90 miles to a lab where my blood can be drawn (I live in a rural area).

These inconveniences are a small price to pay for the freedom of controlling my own health with definite prices. I do everything in my power to avoid the conspiracy of white-robed terrorists and armies of parasitic bureaucrats.

Obamacare was unconstitutional and broken from day one.
Socialized medicine does not work.
Europe coasts along using R&D paid for in USA.
Media was forever whining about how great medicine was in USSR and Cuba – until the facts came out.
Read Market Ticker; monopolies ruin anything.

Dual USA-EU citizen here.

Food prices in the European Union are typically lower than they are in the United States, mainly owing to how CAP functions compared to America’s farm programs. Bear in mind that agriculture does not operate in a free market in any developed country (the USA is obviously an inherently lower cost producer than Europe in agriculture).

That said comparing second tier Italian cities to New York is not a reasonable comparison. New York City has some of the highest rent per square foot in the entire United States, and there are also substantial regulatory costs.

I live in a rural area for instance and can “enjoy” (unlike New York or Italy, all restaurant meals besides fast food are bad) an entire meal for $10. $20 if I want an appetizer, steak, and a cocktail. You’d need to go to Eastern Europe to find prices like that in the EU.

Prices also vary by country in Europe. Costs on the continent are reasonable–typically much more affordable than major American cities, and as you note wine is quite cheap in the wine producing countries of Europe.

Once you get to the North Sea things change. Restaurant in Britain and the low countries tend to be considerably higher than in America, and in the Nordic countries they are shockingly high (even if you ignore Norway).

The basic breakdown on consumer prices between Europe and the USA works like this:

Real estate: cheaper in America
Manufactured goods: cheaper in America
Energy: much cheaper in America
Telecommunications: cheaper in Europe
Food: (mostly) cheaper in Europe
Healthcare and education: much cheaper in Europe

Of course the breakdown isn’t complete without considering income. Here it really depends on your social station. Blue collar labor is substantially better off in Europe. White collar labor is about the same on both sides of the pond, though with some differences depending on the profession (e.g. doctors are grossly overpaid in America). Business owners and executives are substantially better paid in America.

If you’ve got something on the ball and avoid healthcare and education costs you are better off (materially) in America. Most other people are better off in Europe, especially if rural areas aren’t an option.

Obviously there are quality of life issues not related to money per se. Europe has nicer cities, America has more countryside. Can’t find a good steak in Europe, but cuisine in America is awful outside of the major cities (to be fair it’s really only Italy, France, and Spain with good cuisine in Europe). Americans considerably fatter than Europeans, and despite Merkel’s blunder Europe including its cities remains far whiter than America.

In general the differences between America and the EU are exaggerated, especially today as things have been converging for some time. This includes even healthcare. Costs are rising in Europe (they finally stopped rising in America), various rationing schemes have been introduced in many national medical services such as copays and doctor visit fees, and of course the madness for “privatization” (e.g. the state-owned Swedish medical service was “privatized” in the 90s leading to charming news stories like elderly people having their diapers weighed to see if they really needed to be changed).

It certainly might have something to do with cities visited, which were not the Rome-Florence-Venice big three. So perhaps there was little tourist overcharge where we went; we certainly heard more locals talking than English conversation in Bologna, Verona, and Turin.

VAT was included. The price on the menu, plus the pane e coperto which I think goes to the waiter, was what you paid.

Some examples of things that you might compare to US prices: full bottle of mineral water, we never paid more than 3€, VAT included. That’s about $3.50. Wine by the glass: cheap, 3€, very good 5€, top of the line 10€, this for Valpolicella reds. One place put a liter of the local plonk on our table, Unasked for, for €7; we did drink and enjoy it. The most expensive entree I saw was 25€ (note: we did not go to one VERY expensive place in Turin where entrees were in the 30s), and in fact we had very good meals made up of entrees priced no more than €14. They were also too large a portion to have a primo and a secondo course.

Mineral water around NYC goes for $5 minimum for places with the quality of food we ate in Italy. A cheap glass of red wine is Minimum $8; you occasionally find a place with promotional glasses at $5. And for good sit-down restaurants in NYC, the under-$20 entree is gone.

My understanding of Bismarck’s motives are pretty much like yours: deflate the socialists, accrue prestige to the German emperor, and–wish I had a reference–the charitable impulse within Lutheran Christian piety.

the socialist economy and public services developing in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) after the Second World War provided an alternative for West German workers who then successfully pushed

That’s nonsense. After the founding of the FRG they re-introduced the health insurance & abolished some nazi regulations, which made it essentially into the health insurance as it existed before 1933. Later changes were inclusion of pensioners (1957), farmers (1972) & university students (1975). There were always fairly small changes to the system depending on how much money was available, but the basic structure didn’t change much & is still fairly similar to what Bismarck had planned.

Your idea of GDR influence sounds very much like you’re simply trying to make socialism look good. The only more or less direct influence socialism had, was on Bismarck, though. He introduced the health care system partially because he tried to prevent the growth of socialist influence in society. Nothing like that was necessary in the FRG.

BTW, considering this biased depiction of the German situation, it’s probably fair to assume that the rest of your article is just as biased in favour of socialism.

My parents visited Italy twice in recent years and certainly did NOT find it to be cheaper to dine out than it was at home in northern New Jersey (near NYC), which is an expensive area.

With a TWENTY-TWO percent Value-Added Tax , which seems to be applicable to restaurant bills in Italy — compared to 6-8% in most US locations — it’s hard to see how it could be much cheaper, if cheaper at all, to dine out in Italy than in most places in the USA. Even Washington DC levies 10% sales tax on restaurants, a far cry from Italy’s 22% VAT.

We are definitely going down the toilet!

I hate this debate. Doctors are white-robed terrorist quacks.

On the other hand, the US tops all European countries in terms of the percentage of workers and family members who avoid necessary trips to the doctor because they fear financial ruin from the inflated costs of their private health care. In other words, majorities of people, dependent on private for-profit insurance schemes to provide health care, cannot afford to visit a medical facility, doctor or clinic even to treat a significant illness.

The only necessary trip to the doctor is for traumatic injury. Bone fractures, stab wounds, gun shots, etc.

Everything else is the consequence of poor habits such as improper hygiene & cleaning, poor food safety practices, consumption of carbohydrates and industrial seed oils, failing to lift weights, and not getting enough sun.

To this we can add those born with genetic diseases. The state should mandate that these people never be born in the first place.

The bottom line is that healthcare is for losers.

The only medical intervention I recommend for winners is donating blood (reduces ferritin accumulation).

Instead of figuring out how to cover people or make healthcare more affordable, we should make healthcare illegal. Or at the very least we should at least ban fat people from any kind of medical treatment ffs.

Tired of all these whinging sick fags.

A rec my trip overseas shows the cost of healthcare as run in the USA. Italy, Germany and other Western European countries could hardly be considered “cheap”by global standards. But eating out? We were consistently able to dine, very well, in Italy for one half the cost, or even less, in New York, Chicago, and a few other places. It might be the cost of the food, but more likely it’s the cost of labor and the cost of rent, which as James has pointed out is siphoned off as interest to pay the debt that strangles the USA.

My guess is costs are lower in Ohio and places like that, but I’d still wager that for the quality of food served you pay much more in the USA. I’d think a capitalist would want to fix this problem, but we only have crony capitalists using Federal tax policy to feed at the trough.

Thanks, Prof. Petras.

Here’s a portion of an unpublished letter I sent my local newspaper regarding a failed state-wide health care initiative:

“Who wouldn’t want to uncover the veil of sorcery that has many folks qualifying for bazillions in medical treatment at little cost to themselves, while others are forced to throw themselves on the mercy of the emergency room only to be dunned for years after for the full cost of treatment that may be too late?”

Trick question, of course. Neither elites nor the general public actually want to know squat about how that health insurance card got stuffed in their wallets. They dish up explanations of convenience for their good fortune, and reduce their questioning of health care to something like: What’s my co-pay? They’re insurance-drunk.

We’ll get a Medicare for All scheme, and the driver will be group health insurance acting as a poorly checked and destructive excise tax on labor, pushing legacy industries into bankruptcy, ditto legacy cities such as Detroit, and possibly older states into bankruptcy.

An anecdote: I know of a couple large companies whose goal is to have zero sick days off, so their Workman’s Compensation premiums don’t get jacked up. They have made informal deals with the local ER doctors to make sure that no doctor writes orders for time off work for injuries, with the threat of sending business to other hospitals if the docs can’t comply with their wishes. All hurt workers, unless needing in-patient care, are sent back to in-factory sick bays with hospital beds to do whatever they are capable of doing, even if only coloring in coloring books. This also has the effect of cutting down on malingering to stay home and watch TV. Loose part of a finger? You go to work the next day with your hand all bandaged up and lay in bed and count ceiling tile and get paid wages to count ceiling tile, no “sick time” ever accrued.

To put it bluntly, the US is just a shitty place to live in.

Which is why Jews survived and prospered, ironicall

Jews practiced usury, and hence their debt claims grew exponentially, making demands outside of nature. These debts were in the form of pledges, i.e. a debt instrument.

Said debt instruments would be housed at Jewish establishments/homes.

As Hudson says, that which cannot be paid, won’t be paid. Jewish usurers, practicing their family tradition (usury), also tended to physically isolate themselves, as an in-group.

When the public, who were being hosted, could no longer bear exponential burdens of usury, said public would torch houses and business of Jews, thus wiping out records of debts.

It was a form of Jubilee by fire. Jews did not survive and prosper until Catholic Church created a policy, where Jews were not to be persecuted, but on the other hand, Jews were not allowed to attack and undermine their host society. This Catholic Policy is now lost to history, and the West has morphed into State Sponsored Usury, often with Jews at the helm.

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The only thing I agree with is that Khruschev was not up to the task. But not because of his ideals but because of his fecklessness in key moments; it was the nomenklatura that replaced him, after all. However, as expected, he was replaced with a Brezhnev that was louder and more populist but who also really only depended on higher oil prices, because corruption under him became endemic. And most people cannot remember Andropov’s short term of reforms without remembering also his KGB ruthlessness. Therefore, as much as you can complain about Gorbachev selling out, it was perhaps inevitable because of all the systematic failure provoked by the nomenklatura. It is not helpful that by the early 50s Stalinism had undeniably and already become way too oppressive and even backwards, and perestroika showed all the nomenklatura corruption under the sun from then and through the decades.

Then again, it is also true that Russians are used to strong leaders and therefore prefer them, even when despotic, as long as they keep things kinda working for most. Same for Hispanics, because of the strong caudillo cultural tradition. So perhaps neither culture can do any better, and thus you may be right overall.

Collectivization just sped up the process and made it much more bloodier than needed be.

You have the right to an opinion; however, considering that the massive western attack on the USSR was less 10 years away, and it seems obvious that Soviet leaders correctly (more or less) estimated it by 1932, your “than needed be” appears to be a wholly unwarranted claim.

The US demanded lend-lease compensation from everyone. Difference is, the capitalist countries could afford it eventually because they grew productive again (and the US wanted them to remain capitalist anyway – the threat of the German Revolution of 1919-1920, plus the early 20s’ misguided policies of the German left, helped the Brownshirts’ rise). The other kind, even when given aid, they tend to vacuum it into their pockets. Yugoslavia for example, which shone under Tito and NATO aid, but which suffered anyway when he died; sectarian lines arose again, and the oil-stagflation crisis made it hard to give away money to them anyway. Thus their Western-friendly socialism fell like a house of cards.

As for the offered aid to the USSR, I don’t recall if it was true or not. At any rate, the Soviets had military and industrial advantage on the rest of Europe right after the war, and more arable land than even America; why did they not become the new breadbasket of the world (a world that sorely needed bread, mind you) and thus become the new ruling economic power? It goes to show that the better remembered Soviet era among Russians today is the early Brezhnev one, where high oil prices hid everything.

Wrong, industrialization everywhere was accompanied by peasants losing livelihoods, which not necessarily happened due to collectivization, but simply because the old serfdom-order was not as economically productive as industrialization in a global scale (lest we forget, industrialization arose in the age of empires, aka captive markets, which globalization intends to replicate, with its pros and cons). Collectivization just sped up the process and made it much more bloodier than needed be. Obviously in the Soviet case it was a step up from the previous feudal system, better late and botched and forced than never; but that does not mean collectivization is the only alternative. In the Western world, the nobility eventually had a lot of its land overtaken by the monarch and/or bourgeoisie and/or farmer’s co-ops (a later development) and/or agribusiness, achieving the same result but with much higher and varied production, and less loss of life due to starvation.

Plus, Stalin trusted the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and only would have needed enough armies to hold the border with the German General Government of Poland had Hitler not drank the Himmlerian Lebensraum Kool-aid nonsense so much. Even when victors, the USSR military that you extol led the world in losses; thankfully due to its size it could afford many of them. Not too different from when the backwards Tsarist regime defeated Napoleon.

A Constitutional Convention where we would enthrone Zuckerberg as Supreme Leader.

Grow up. I find it hilarious that Georgists like Mr. Hudson are the best socialism can offer. While I agree on slightly raising land taxes and taxes on Wall Street overall, it is clear that the “land tax only” approach works in places where the land is solely owned by big wealthy Junkers, where said land is scarce and easily accessible, and where said Junkers do not make any effort to produce from said land. These conditions limit who would pay this tax (specially in nations with many small landowners, more remote areas, and more farmers), and therefore it is not the silver bullet Georgists pretend it to be. Henry George did live in Victorian England, where the conditions were more ripe for this; even now many English are not owners. But the world is not the same all over. Nowadays, land taxes in most of the West are more often levied by city governments, where it levies a good amount of money, but also causes the rise of property prices and allows only the wealthier Junkers who can afford to pay the tax to own most of the land. So again, it is not a panacea.

Which is why Jews survived and prospered, ironically.

My favorite lines from this long piece:

Industry has become a vehicle for financial engineering to increase stock prices and strip assets, not to increase the means of production. The result is that capitalism has fallen prey to resurgent rentier interests instead of liberating economies from absentee landlords, predatory banking and monopolies. Banks and bondholders have found their most lucrative market not in the manufacturing sector but in real estate and natural resource extraction.

The late 1940′s were hungry times. Even in the ’60′s things got bad at times. Not 1921 in Saratov bad but food a bit short, according to people I talk to about their childhood.

I’ve been doing business in Russia for 25 years. I’ve met people who thought Stalin was good because he was strong but not many not even amongst nationalists, certainly not amongst politically active communists. Bolshevism is now seen as a huge mistake. Only Brezhnev is considered warmly. He had good oil prices.

And yet poverty is falling everywhere excepting such as Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

and remember that marx was also engels. so the idea that authentic marxism is jewish is not quite right.

Moreover, Marx was a complete apostate Jew, completely estranged from Judaism and any community of those who practiced it.

How do you expect to maintain a welfare state (which is what basic income amounts to) if the next generation is smaller in size than the former one? Unless you plan mass euthanasia after retirement – which would not even happen a lot if the proposed basic income is deemed too sufficient by enough people that would rather give up attempting to produce.

Several problems here. When it comes to numbers, Soviet records are notoriously spotty, even deliberately falsified. Most historians n those writers who experienced the Ukrainian famine alone put the number of victims at well over 3 million n closer to 6. Then there are the 2 M Volga famine victims in 1918, another 2 M in 1921, n another 2 M in 1923. Solzhenitsyn puts the total victims of the Soviet state at 66M, the Gulag never having less than several million people being worked to death (including women n small children) in its camps at any given time from the early 1920s to the late 1950s, requiring a constant source of new condemned laborers to be acquired by whatever means necessary since the average life span of a prisoner was only 3 years. I say prisoner rather than convict since most were condemned without trial. We haven’t even mentioned the 6 million Soviet POWs forcibly returned to SU after the war (mostly by Truman n Eisenhower) most of whom were sent permanently to the Gulag for having surrendered to Germans during WW2. Soviet undercounted the numbers of dead for obvious reasons just as they overcounted economic production.

That is why I am asking Sergey Krieger to back up his point of view with some evidence.

Well, what about the most obvious, common sense evidence I posted in 41:

the USSR fully industrialized, defeated the EU version 3, expanded its borders and greatly expanded its sphere of influence, built and tested atomic weapons.

It seems to me, by all the usual criteria it was a huge success.

Take Napoleon Bonaparte, for example. He was successful leader for a while, building an empire – but he was defeated eventually and lost everything, with his empire collapsing during his lifetime. Yet, he is considered one of the greatest heroes of France. With Stalin, it seems far less controversial.

Your boy Lourie (Clinton adviser) doesn’t like collectivization, but every industrialization everywhere was accompanies by an agrarian reform. Industrialization can’t happen without consolidation of small family farms, masses of peasants losing their livelihood and becoming factory workers. In the 1930s USSR, due to the geopolitical situation — anticipation of a big war — super-rapid industrialization required a super-rapid agrarian reform. Thus, collectivization. What would Mr Lourie, the Hillary adviser, do instead? Faced the most brutal war in history with no tanks and a bunch of peasants?

Although the participation of the Soviet Union and East European nations was an initial possibility,

So, this, from a government website, is your best evidence of the claim that “the U.S. offered massive economic aid to the Soviet Union after the defeat of Germany and Japan in 1945″?

Not much, eh?

And don’t you think that if true aid was offered – altruistic shipments of food, vehicles, consumer products – then surely it would’ve been accepted? And are you aware that, contrary to offering aid, the US was demanding compensation for the war-time lend-lease?

[At least this sort of comment is half-reasonable and connected with the discussion. But if you return at any point to your very bad behavior, most of your comments, both reasonable and unreasonable will just be trashed for an extended period of time to teach you a lesson.]

It was clearly offered, but there were complications, aka: Stalin

FWIW:

“The State Department worked out the Marshall Plan, which its Secretary offered at first to the Big Four
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/ni/vol13/no08/notm1.htm”

“What the Secretary of State left unsaid was that while the U.S. plan would be open to the Soviet Union and its satellites in Eastern Europe … ”

https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/short-history/truman

“Although the participation of the Soviet Union and East European nations was an initial possibility …”

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/marshall-plan

The numbers of those who were incarcerated are out. Total from 1921 till 1953 around 3 million including about 700 000 executed, not exactly everyone considering population of the time. Frankly, not that much considering what time it was. And you should not forget that those people were jailed for breaking laws of the time. Vast majority were jailed and executed because they were guilty of crimes. Simple. Archives are opened. Numbers are out. Also, you should always remember who started smearing Stalin. Elites had great interest in smearing him, otherwise nobody would dare.

Well, for them, Stalin was a step up from the Bolsheviks, Cheka and the NKVD. The Russian revolution was a revolution against the Russian ethno state just was it was about economic ideology. Individual Russians suffered surely, but he rehabilitated Russian ethnicity itself by the 30s. Before that it was Russian guilt , then called Russian Chauvinism. Its not unlike white guilt we see today. He did so for selfish reasons of course. Without Russians any old Western power would have picked the Soviets apart.

To some extend the Russian rulers did provoke this with rather clumsy Russfication polices , thus the backlash was to some extend cultivated by Russia. Finland is a particularly painful example of a people provoked. they were causing any trouble but got Russification anyway. However in other cases it was religious and ethnic tension. One far East Islamic leader stated that Russian made life too good and thus it was too corrupting. It was not unlike the leading Russian Rabbi fighting against Napoleon because of a far too liberating civil code for Jews. More than once we have seen religious leaders hating material competition for the attention of their flock.

Socialism isn’t communism light. The problem with communism is related to socialism in a rather complicated and apparent paradox. We do have several advantages in that it was suggested by political philosophers like Montesquieu and then we saw it actually occur with the Russian revolution. The closer one gets to complete freedom the closer one is to loosing it.

Communism delegitimizes authority with “power to the people”. Thus communism acts as a fumigant. This leaves a power vacuum that is filled with another “people loving” enterprise called socialism which is just like communism in that is “good for the people”. the only difference is that its centrally managed and authoritarian. The Bolsheviks easily wrested the Russian empire from the formless mass of orthodox Marxists. Then came the punch line : “war communism”.

Again this effect of freedom leading to bondage is easily observed. The Federalists argued this same point.

“Spain thinks it convenient to shut the Mississippi against us on the one side, and Britain excludes us from the Saint Lawrence on the other; nor will either of them permit the other waters which are between them and us to become the means of mutual intercourse and traffic.
…

Apply these facts to our own case. Leave America divided into thirteen or, if you please, into three or four independent governments–what armies could they raise and pay–what fleets could they ever hope to have? If one was attacked, would the others fly to its succor, and spend their blood and money in its defense? ”

- John Jay.

The individual freedom of each state may have led to a greater servitude .

Communism would not be bad at all if it were not for the fact that it is absolutely defenseless from being usurped. This is not to mention that one is perfectly free to be a communist as we speak. One may go and form a commune . They may find like minded people and live according to this ethos. However when people speak of “communism” it seems its never without the force of the state. Thus once again all it is is a phase of self immolation where the protection of the people is completely removed.

Uuuuh. No. That’s a horrible suggestion.

I’ve read 50 books on Stalin and Russia. Another 50 on the Cold War. Those two I happen to have out of the library right now. I entered that text myself. I don’t need to Google anything.

My point of view obviously makes more sense that’s why I am writing about it.

That is why I am asking Sergey Krieger to back up his point of view with some evidence. He is simply providing his opinion without argument or facts or evidence.

All you guys need is to provide one book. One author. Something. One metric to compare and at the same time show it would have been worse without what happened during the Stalin years. That should be easy.

Then I can go read that book and be amazed by how you guys are right about everything all the time.

I’ve been studying Russia for 30 years. I’ve never known anybody but Russian World War II vets ,who lived and weren’t sent to the Gulag as a reward for their service, speak fondly of the Stalin experience. I find it amusing.

Even Putin is on record repeatedly speaking of what a disaster it was.

It’s always striking how easily manipulated Russians were (and are) by Stalin’s cynical (and desperate) appeals to Russian nationalism.

“The USSR’s main use for oil was for domestic purposes, Moscow always prizing independence from a hostile capitalist world. But Moscow needed that world too because Russia, which before the revolution had been the world’s greatest exporter of grain, ”
Now, Russia did export grain but who exported grain? Few big producers while majority was starving. Hence Russia was exporting while peasants regularly had no enough bread to eat and most had to actually buy bread to survive., It is long story. But many look at Russia exports and do not know what was going on in Russia of the time. After collectivization starvation and famines stopped. Some magic?

Regarding debates in 1920′s party. Debates are good only so far. They should lead to actions. The destiny of the country was on line. You cannot debate all the time.
The problem of lack of debates later after Stalin death wa snot Stalin doing. Each generation has got own problems to solve. Khrushchev was not up to the task. Intellectual midget, I would say moron frankly. He undermined the whole system.

Agree. Stalinism kept elites under control. Hence once he was dead they rushed to abandon Stalinism under which they had to be responsible for the actions and inactions. They eventually wanted more and he we arrived at 1985 and what followed. Stalinism was no more for some 30 years by then and still it built the foundation upon which Russia still depends.

“You should ask yourself this question. Stalinism encompassed Soviet history from 1924 till 1953. Under Stalin. Take a look at both ends and compare.”

Isn’t it a clue. Ok, compare Russia in 1924 to 1953. Even better, compare it to Russia 1914 in every respect including standing in World ranks, GDP, literacy, health and so forth and compare. not enough? Sorry. I am not kindergarten teacher.
Another clue would be from your very own Churchill ““Stalin found Russia working with wooden plows and left it equipped with atomic piles,” attributed to Winston Churchill”

So, you read a book? Or did google suggest these quotes to you?

In any case, that’s a good start. And now, why don’t you read or google something with the opposite point of view, compare, and see which one makes more sense.

You aren’t even giving us a clue as to what we would be comparing. “Great success” – your words. If you can’t define anything than you can say that about virtually any leader who has presided over an empire for thirty years (and lived). It’s meaningless.

Give me a link to a history book that says what you state and a page reference.

Because I’m reading this right now and I’m getting a distinctly different feel about Stalinism than what you are trying to say:

Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy by Dmitri Volkogonov

Volkogonov entered the military at the age of seventeen in 1945, which was common for many orphans. He studied at the Lenin Military-Political Academy in Moscow in 1961, transferring to the Soviet Army’s propaganda department in 1970. There he wrote propaganda pamphlets and manuals on psychological warfare and gained a reputation as a hardliner.

It was as early as the 1950s, while a young Army officer, that Volkogonov first discovered information that created cognitive dissonance within himself. While reading early journals of Party members from the 1920s, Volkogonov realized “how stifled and sterile political debate in the Soviet Union had become in comparison to the early days.” Khrushchev’s 1956 secret speech further solidified this thought within him, but he kept these thoughts to himself at that time.

-this from wikipedia about the author

And then there is this:

“The USSR’s main use for oil was for domestic purposes, Moscow always prizing independence from a hostile capitalist world. But Moscow needed that world too because Russia, which before the revolution had been the world’s greatest exporter of grain, had become by the late 1970s the world’s largest importer. In 1963 Khrushchev had spent a third of the country’s gold to buy grain. The collective agriculture forcibly imposed by Stalin was a failure. As the head of a collective farm once said to me: “.. . collective farming could have worked. It worked in Israel.. .. But it couldn’t be done by force and decree.” Storage and distribution were also significant problems, up to a third of a year’s crop lost to spillage and spoilage.”
-pg. 106

Putin: His Downfall and Russia’s Coming Crash
by Richard Lourie (July 2017)

Yeah, it’s certainly odd that he calls the Soviet collapse under Gorby “The collapse of Russian Stalinism“.

Of course it was neither Russian nor Stalinism.

And indeed, Stalinism, when it ended, was nowhere near collapse, quite the opposite: the USSR fully industrialized, defeated the EU version 3 (the Roman empire being v1, and then the French v2), expanded its borders and greatly expanded its sphere of influence, built and tested atomic weapons.

You are still believe in old lies?

The deliberate starvation of millions of Christians was a great success.

You remind me of Kevin Kline’s character in A Fish Called Wanda (“We did not lose Vietnam (Afghanistan)! It was a tie!”)

You should ask yourself this question. Stalinism encompassed Soviet history from 1924 till 1953. Under Stalin. Take a look at both ends and compare. If it is not great success you should go and see a shrink.

Nobody, we pay more to Brussels than we get back

I don’t see anything is your link indicating that “The U.S. offered massive economic aid to the Soviet Union” (as per 7). Try again.

Stalinism most certainly did not fail. It was greatest success. What was after Stalin could not be called Stalinism

.

I’m sure that makes sense to somebody, somewhere. What planet are you from?

That plus the murder of a couple hundred million of their own people.

To this day a majority believes they are a “capitalist” if they “believe” in capitalism

They don’t even understand what you mean when you inform them that Marx believed in capitalism
For decades the threat of a socialist superpower kept capitalists behaving – finding ways to divide the wealth equitably
For decades the American middle and working class reaped the benefits of socialism – sideways – by way of volunteering for the US military, which allowed millions of them to prosper from veteran socialism while preaching individual capitalism, and no one would ever challenge them on this, and they existed inside an echochamber of their own making

For decades the strength they drew from this grew a sort of middle class collective, the benefits, prosperity and virtues of which overflowed into all kinds of other things

Anyway – jorge videla writing upstairs from here is right – there is a middle way – combine the known aspects of the middle way with S.Sailor “citizenism” and we may steer through Scylla and Charybdis

Where lies that champion though? Certainly not yet in DT