• TimLovesTech (AuDHD)(he/him)A
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    4 months ago

    The GOP logic doesn’t compute. Do they think that all the working poor are just going to stop working if they could actually go to a Dr. and perhaps get healthier? Do they suddenly have no bills? The unemployment rate is also 3.7% right now, how many people do they possibly think they could “force” to work for health coverage that don’t work currently because they have to pay bills they can barely cover? I would love to see them just try and produce some kind of statistics behind of this that shows anything other than just “we need to punish the poor”, because apparently being poor has always been something we need to punish.

    • GiddyGap@lemm.eeOP
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      4 months ago

      I have quite a few Republican family members who are wildly opposed to “socialist government healthcare” while being on…yes…Medicare. Go figure.

      • TimLovesTech (AuDHD)(he/him)A
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        4 months ago

        It’s like the people that are strongly against unemployment, you pay into the damn thing so you have it when you need it. Nobody is giving you a hand out, you are just getting back money you allowed the government to make interest/investments with. And having healthier people just seems like a net win for society, but I think some of these people just don’t want “those people” to have it, so it’s easier and less racist looking to take it away from everyone.

    • SoylentBlake@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      It helps when you acknowledge that the 3.7% tells us nothing.

      The government changed the way unemployment is calculated in 1994, so it doesn’t count full time seeking people out of work for more than 3 months - the ‘chronically’ dispossessed. They put the onus on the individual, absolving their system of any defect. “Clearly” they aren’t applying enough or trying hard enough, otherwise they wouldn’t be unemployed

      Do you ever get the feeling that these definitions are written by people whove never experienced what they’re defining? Some admins child/nephew/hush money babysitter dropped into a government stipend, by right of birth, or access to those with capital.

      Unfortunately when the data gets crunched the old fashioned way, real unemployment is hovering around 24.6%

      Which is much more likely, imo, as inflation has made large swathes of lower pay work unteneble for anyone not hyperlocal. Pair this with the pandemic training on financial subsistence living, of those who are sidestepping the system.

      We live in an era of income inequality greater than at any other known in modern western history. It was easier to buy a house during the great depression. One set of facts seems in line with that, and one doesn’t. I wonder why that would be…