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Saturday, October 19, 2019

Legalized Theft

When people talk about bringing manufacturing back to the US, they're really talking about health care, whether they realize it or not, whether they care or not. That's just how it is.

And when they debate a "choice" between "Medicare for All" or the "public option," it inevitably comes down to how much it will cost and who will pay for it. All of that avoids the elephant in the room -- how much everything costs. What we laughingly refer to (in Voltaire's "Holy Roman Empire" sense) as the "health care system" is in fact an unholy collusion between HMOs, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies, designed explicitly to hoover money out of a captive market, and if need be to hunt down destitute cancer patients and get them on the debt hook of our for-profit carceral state.

With private equity scumbags leading the charge, it's no wonder Wall Street hates Warren and Sanders -- they might actually do something about this evil system. No matter which candidate finally gets the nomination, they'll have their work cut out for them. As I've said for many years now, Wall Street despises Main Street, and this country is literally owned and operated by psychotic billionaires who would rather bankroll Grampa Walnuts another four years to start World War 3, than pay a single percentage point more in taxes -- or hell, even pay the taxes they actually owe right now.

We need another system, not merely a tweak here and there, but a complete rebuild. This doesn't work for most people anymore. It is sadistic, and the playing field is uneven for all but the few who own it. People do not change until they understand that the cost of not changing is greater than the cost of changing, and nowhere is that more true than with the handful of greedy chiselers who own most of everything.

Near as I can tell, there are just two ways to get them to that understanding:  violence, or making them broke. The second option would be preferable for a number of reasons, but may not be feasible since they own all the basic necessities people have to use or obtain, and it is extraordinarily difficult to keep a sufficient number of people attentive and motivated simultaneously.

But that's how it happens, and that's how it changes. No politician, no matter how well-meaning, will ever be able to more than make modest, incremental adjustments to a system that is irretrievably wrong, run by a business model that is literally set up to not provide the service for which it has already been paid, or to finally provide the product at an outrageous markup.

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