The unanswered question: why are there Allah socks in the first place?
I am imagining a clothing supplier in China receiving an order for socks for a bargain store chain in Malaysia. "What design should we put on it?" "I dunno, anything that appeals to the customers." "What do Malaysians like?" "They're Muslims, right? Guess they like Allah." "Aight let's go with that."
Armed offensive against the illegal Myanmar junta.
It’s not as if healthcare costs have some inherent reason to increase along with wealth.
Well, there are several big reasons. For example, doctors and nurses in the USA have much higher pay than those in Europe. Part of this is because of policy differences (e.g., the supply of US doctors is artificially restricted by the AMA). But part of it is simply that educated professionals are paid much more in the USA than in Europe, and it's nothing specific to healthcare.
The point is that when making comparisons between US and other rich countries, the first thing you have to do is to account for the fact that Americans (i) have higher GDP per capita, and (ii) have higher levels of consumption even after compensating for GDP per capita. That should be the first-order effect, with stuff like the public-versus-private issue as second-order effects.
I do agree with the benefits to the US not being proportional to the cost, to a point. Lots of healthcare spending goes into things that don't really benefit aggregate outcomes, like heroic interventions that end up extending end-of-life by a few months, or treatments that only benefit one-in-a-million conditions. But this is not just an issue for the US; for example, the UK spends 18x on healthcare per capita compared to Thailand, for 2 extra years of life expectancy. And those individuals who get their lives extended by a small amount, or get their rare condition treated, may have different views on the matter.
I disagree. That is precisely the thing that needs to be unpacked and rebutted, because it's the actual thing these people are worried about. Not the financial sustainability of Social Security, or whatever.
Just look at the Wikipedia page on List of countries by household final consumption expenditure per capita. Americans consume much more than anyone else on the world, and it's not even close. Americans even consume at a higher level than the "ultra-rich" countries that exceed it in GDP per capita, e.g. 30 percent more than Luxembourg (which is number 2 on the list)!
This covers all forms of consumption, in which healthcare is only a fraction. The discrepancy is so great that it can't be explained by US healthcare being expensive. It's the other way round, it's healthcare consumption that is being pulled along by the rest of the consumption.
While I don't disagree with the premise of this article, it does a piss poor job at rebuttal. It tries to explain that migrants and asylum seekers won't get to vote in this next election, don't draw SS/Medicare benefits today, and anyway the census is only every ten years, etc. But the "great replacement" stuff is about fears about changing the population over the long term, so this kind of counterargument either falls flat or will be interpreted as gaslighting.
A new holodomor, this time abetted by the US. Somewhere, Stalin is smiling.
US keeps getting cucked and going back for more.
Not just an issue of military forces. The New Territories were where all the water supplies for Hong Kong Island were located. It would have been a completely untenable situation once the 99 year lease ran out.
This is a composition effect. Democratic candidates who run for safer, more left-wing constituencies feel free to propose more radical left-wing policies, especially if their main threats are other democrats during primaries. They then go on to win because they're not running in competitive elections. You can use the same reasoning to conclude that Republicans who attack abortion and socialism do better in elections.
This is the flip side of the US achieving a "soft landing", bringing down inflation without triggering a recession. Not having a recession is good, right? Yes, in the main, but one consequence is that asset prices, including housing, will remain elevated for the foreseeable future. These tax credits that Biden's proposing amount to no more than tinkering around the edges of the basic economic situation, at best. At worst, they could ruin the Fed's inflation-fighting campaign at the last stretch.