2rafa
29d ago
The EFF polls around 10-15% now. The EFF is also much more leftist than the ANC or DA, its messaging isn’t solely about taking white money but also about redistribution from rich to poor generally, I don’t think it’s correct to ascribe anti-white animus to every EFF voter even if Malema obviously has it.
There’s no coherent definition of indigenous because whether, for example, South African Bantus or New Zealand Maori are indigenous depends on where you draw the cutoff line.
2rafa
29d ago
Yeah Zionists are the ones sperging out about relatively milquetoast Palestinian activism.
2rafa
29d ago
I don’t think trying to get laid is necessarily bad, but lying to people and giving them STDs surely is, as is infidelity more generally.,
2rafa
29d ago
Thanks for the post. I find parents who don’t discipline their kids kind of sad; I spent a lot of time with my grandparents growing up, my grandmother probably hit me twice and my grandfather probably three or four times between the ages of 4 and 12, but by god that made us behave. Kids need a lot of love but a little fear, I think.
More generally, I think significant introspection is a bad idea. The happiest people (unironically Donald Trump) seem to do very little introspection at all.
2rafa
29d ago
The entire US medical system is fucked. Higher drug costs are a substantial input cost, but another huge one is the AMA.
The steps for fixing US healthcare are actually pretty simple:
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Smash the AMA cartel by allowing unlimited immigration of doctors trained in Canada, UK, Australia, NZ and Ireland without any licensing requirements, re-doing residency etc. Allow doctors from other Northern European (not southern) countries if they pass a tough English written and oral exam that requires fluency. This will lower US doctors’ salaries (currently 300% or more of what they are in Europe) by half, to a more reasonable rate where surgeons are respectable PMC but not making a million dollars a year solely because the AMA lobbies to restrict residency places. Doctors should be paid $120-300k a year at the cap, with the high figure for the most elite surgeons in tough specialties. Why is the American middle class paying for anesthesiologists to make $700k a year when their equivalents in European countries that are almost as rich are paid like $150k? There are almost a million doctors in America, this overpaying adds up.
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Handle drug pricing centrally. Insurers pay a price negotiated by a trade association chartered for that purpose and which represents all US insurers (including the state for the VA etc), exempt from the usual rules around cartels. The trade association negotiates as a bloc and can therefore refuse to accept pricing that is any more than a basket of comparable countries (eg rest of Anglosphere) + 20% (at most). Pharma companies will essentially be forced to comply, since there is no other major wealthy market that would possibly pay more than the US. The reason manufacturers can charge so much is that (much as with doctor pay) so much of the cost is offloaded onto third parties (eg employers for most health insurance) in a way that causes huge economic drag but which is often not immediately visible.
2rafa
29d ago
They absolutely don’t want it because yes, it will leave the pharma companies (many of which have large operations in Europe) with no choice but to substantially raise costs for their healthcare systems.
2rafa
29d ago
Cool. Why don't they just cut off all supplies to Europe and sell exclusively to the US at 20x the price.
Because they’re a European company. And I think you’re ignoring a major risk, which is that if the US tries to push for the same price, and the Danes say no, and the US says “fuck it, we’ll make generics”, the EU actually has a lot of leverage. A huge amount of US exports are intellectual property sold at zero marginal cost. The EU can make it legal to ignore those rights.
2rafa
28d ago
We already do it. Software engineers can come over on the H1B, doctors need to pass the USMLE and then apply to do residency which is competitive in the extreme even for US-trained doctors because places are deliberately limited.
Medicine is like if there was a Guild of Software Engineers which worked with colleges and code boot camps to ensure only a small fraction of people who want to be and are intellectually capable of being programmers can study coding. And they also get the state to pass laws ensuring that only Guild-licensed programmers are allowed to code professionally.
2rafa
28d ago
vs. 4 years of undergrad + 4 years of med school in the U.S.
The 4 years of undergrad could be in a variety of subjects and aren’t really comparable to the first few years of training in countries where med school begins at 18.
2rafa
28d ago
A large proportion of attempts, for both sexes but especially for women, are cries for help/attention. But yes, the reason for higher male completion is probably both access to high-effectiveness tools (ie they’re more likely to own a gun) and higher male impulsiveness.
2rafa
28d ago
And if the Europeans respond by abrogating patent rights, go nuclear (figuratively) on them -- remove them from normal trade relations, start abrogating THEIR patent rights, etc.
It would be interesting to see what the effects of this kind of patent war would be. Europe has a trade surplus with the US (iirc), but the outcome in this case would depend a great deal on whether the US’ IP is more valuable to the American economy than the EU’s IP is to its. Certain kinds of niche skilled manufacturing is harder to replicate domestically even if you don’t have to worry about IP than, say, copy-pasting Disney movies is.
I think you’re discussing a few separate issues:
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“Debt loads are too high to pay less.” Agree in part, the solution is to subsidize medical school costs such that medical students pay no more than the average STEM degree haver who goes on to a well-but-not-exceptionally-highly paid job.
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“No talent will go into the profession”. Plenty of smart people are going to continue to want to be doctors for a salary of $120-300k a year. Are you going to get the 99.9th percentile people who want a guaranteed path to being moderately rich? No, but the question here is ‘do we need them?’. Is it really so bad if doctors are 95th percentile people instead of 99th percentile? I don’t think so, I think there are plenty of moderately smart people happy to do this job for $200k a year if trained. And healing people is high status vs. sales or finance or other professions people consider a little dirty. That boosts demand to be a doctor too, in the same way that many smart people want to be journalists or diplomats even though they get paid badly.
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“Residency sucks”. Again, completely agreed. Doctors shouldn’t have to work 100 hour weeks during training. That’s an issue for hospitals and people who manage residency programs to solve, ideally with the help of residents. On the other hand, a lot of doctors have a ladder-pulling mentality and think that because they went through it, the kids of today have to do so too.
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“Midlevels are taking our jerbs”. Again, I agree that this is a problem and I sympathize with doctors who see poorly-trained midlevels hurt patients and waste time and money. But they don’t seem to understand that mid levels are a consequence of desperation on the part of other elements of the healthcare system (ie the hospital managers who have to try and balance budgets) because doctors are paid so much money. In other systems, doctors might be paid 60-80% more than nurses. In the US (excluding rare examples of temp/travel nurses etc), specialist doctors and surgeons often make 300% more than baseline unspecialized nurses; this naturally leads to the creation and proliferation of midlevel roles. If doctor pay was halved and there were many more doctors in the US, hospitals would obviously hire them instead of CRNAs and specialized NPs etc.
Actually, if the AMA really cared about solving the midlevel problem, they’d provide a simplified pathway for CRNAs and NPs to become physicians, with guaranteed residency at their current hospital (if they pass whatever assessment required) and negotiate some kind of federal support for any dependants during the study process.
Right now it takes like 10-12 years for a competent CRNA to become an anesthesiologist, even if they can already do much of the job. Surely you can see how ridiculous it is - do you REALLY think it takes 10+ years to teach a good CRNA to do an anesthesiologist’s job?
2rafa
28d ago
You can’t invoke article 5 unless you’re subject to ‘armed attack’ on home territory, which is clearly defined in article 6 as your sovereign territory or land on which your troops were stationed in 1949. As French troops weren’t in Ukraine in 1949 it can’t apply.
2rafa
28d ago
I think most American elites now expect Trump to win or consider him at least moderately likely to do so. Biden could pull off an upset but I think there’s less fear about Trump now, it’s clear he can be generally kept within a policy pen in practice if not rhetoric.
2rafa
28d ago
But they just don't seem to care. They are either very stupid, or they have assurances from the usual three letter agencies
They do care, they’re just flailing because their options are limited. What would you do in their place, assuming you couldn’t just fix the election? People turned out against Trump because of fear in 2016 and contempt in 2020. In 2024 people just don’t care anymore.
2rafa
28d ago
That was a zoom call about organizing protests if they lost whose attendees liked to think of themselves as Marvel heroes. Taking them seriously would be laughable.
2rafa
28d ago
We have a similar dynamic in reverse in the UK where the Conservatives are heading toward a huge defeat. Ultimately Westminster system governments kind of sputter out after about ten years. They give up the ghost. It even happened to Thatcher eventually. Everyone in power knows the people want change regardless of type, so why try?
I will solve the childlessness problem hypothetically (amounts and currencies can of course be adapted to a country):
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65% (deductible) federal income tax for all income over $50,000 for anyone over 30 with fewer than one child. The tax drops by 15% per child for the first three children, with historic deductions so that people who still have 3 kids but do so late can claw back some of what they paid. Child deductions only available to couples married at (or within six months of) birth.
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Capital gains tax is doubled for those over 35 with fewer than two children, normal above. Normal rate only available to married or widowed people.
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Death/estate tax for childless people is 60% marginal on estates over $1m in net worth, falling by 20% and rising in threshold by $2m for each child until the fourth.
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75% of roles on boards of directors must go to married parents of at least two children. 50% must go to married parents of at least three children. The same applies to Congressmen and women and to senior positions / positions of responsibility in all regulated industries, and to all cabinet positions in the executive. 90% of senior positions in the military, state department and justice department must be occupied by parents of at least two children.
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Divorce comes with a 10-year additional tax penalty except in cases of (convicted) domestic violence or other abuse (in which case all marital benefits can continue for the victim).
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To qualify for any tax credits, a movie or television production must show or imply that at least 65% of characters with more than 10 minutes of screen-time described or implied as over the age of 27 have children. The same, in real life, applies to cast members with the same screen time threshold.
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Entry to any selective schools (specialized high schools, gifted programs etc) requires a child to have at least one sibling. Priority is given to those with two or more siblings.
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For every child after and including the third under the age of 18, graduates of four-year college degrees can receive $8,000 per year in student debt forgiven. This stacks for married couples where both partners have student debt, and for graduates of medical schools or STEM programs at top-50 (US News) universities, it rises by an additional 50%, meaning that some PMC professional couples could have hundreds of thousands of dollars of college debt completely wiped out, never paying anything, if they have three or more children. (Two doctors with 4 kids under 18 would see $48,000 per year of college debt wiped off).
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A 10% state levy on home sales by childless adults over 30 funds mortgage subsidies for married parents of three or more children on a variable basis depending on the money raised the previous year. Married parents of 2 or more children who have had a child within the last 48 months pay no capital tax on primary home sales.
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White House, senate and congressional internships, state-funded scholarships, Supreme Court clerkships and other prestigious positions for young people are limited to those with at least one sibling. A core part of pushing up birthrates is convincing parents of only children to have another, so it has to be stigmatized.
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For constitutional reasons, exemption from some policies is available for those “constitutionally incapable” of having children. These exemptions must be filed for with a $10,000 processing fee, do not apply to inability to bear children related to any decisions taken by the individual (eg. gender transition, voluntary castration) above the age of federal criminal responsibility (12), or to psychological or material conditions like ‘asexuality’ or just being ugly. All decisions have to be approved unanimously by a panel appointed 50% by congressional republicans and 50% by congressional democrats. The presumption is that in cases of genuine medical infertility that is likely from childhood (ie not discovered later in life) the state will know about it years before any exemption may be needed.
2rafa
27d ago
Yes. People don’t seem to realize that the one thing all states with low birthrates have - from Sweden to Saudi Arabia - is a welfare state.
2rafa
27d ago
Having kids is high status among the rich. I’m not sure how widespread this knowledge is but in wealthy social circles in NYC, London etc being able to afford 4 kids is probably the biggest status marker, since each additional child (including the first) is a few million in costs (once larger housing, 15 years of private school tuition, more rooms on vacation, flights, clubs, college etc are accounted for). If you see a 32 year old secular mom who has 4 kids in Manhattan, you’re looking at someone who has a lot of money.
The problem is that as you say, a DINK couple making $350,000 a year together would have to make like $1m a year or more to have the same lifestyle with 4 kids, assuming they intend to raise them in the manner normal for the upper-middle class.
2rafa
27d ago
Sure, and there are other ultra-niche groups like French tradcaths (who avail themselves very effectively of the generous incentives for children), those in the Dutch Bible Belt and so on for whom the same is true. But that takes an extraordinarily high-pressure traditionalist religious subculture that has had a lot of filtering and leaving. Many, possibly most descendants of shtetl dwellers secularized. Most descendants of Swiss mennonites in 1800 secularized. So did most high-tfr Catholics. This evaporation left highly fertile populations that survived.
We might say that unless you have an ultra-strong core of religious devotion to a community such that it persists even after it is no longer economically necessary, it seems that the arrival of the welfare state typically coincides with declines in fertility rates as other communal organizations and institutions like the extended family suffer.
2rafa
27d ago
All OECD countries have highly developed welfare states. It’s not a “the more welfare, the lower the birth rates” argument, it’s that the existence of any advanced welfare state makes economic bonds between a community less necessary.
2rafa
27d ago
It wasn’t as if the wife of a moderately successful professional man in 1910 was raising her own children or scrubbing kitchen floors the way modern “SAHMs” are expected to; she had maids to do that because wealth inequality was much higher back then and domestic staff much cheaper. Even a skilled artisan or low-level clerical worker would often have a maid in the house.
Sergey kind of has it although my impression is it’s with poly people. Eric Schmidt kind of has it, but only by leading on women about having a kid with him apparently. In general the status loss for a high status woman being a concubine is so significant it doesn’t happen often. To some extent if your definition of ‘high tier’ is young fashion models, Adnan Khashoggi had it in his prime, and he was a billionaire in the 70s and 80s when that was very, very rare indeed.
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