PPP typically includes a correction for healthcare costs as a part of necessary basket of goods.

Note that using PPP numbers without seeing the development dynamic is tricky.

You can become broke in an instant if you lose your job and get really sick in the US. Something simple as driving a pregnant woman to a hospital may cost 3000$ alone. They invented Gofundme for that reason in the first place. I am not talking about the super rich but the average American. Wealth distribution is the other part not mentioned in that chart.
And god forbid if you have Diabetis in the land of the landwhales with one of the highest Diabetis prevalence..


This post was edited by babun1024 on Jun 12 2024 04:11am

I understand it is hard to quantify the argument about safety net for the lower end of income distribution that is provided by the “European “ way of healthcare.

The initial argument was that France is underperforming even European peer countries like Germany which too have a socialized healthcare that doesn’t make you broke if you pull the wrong card.

Post-financial crisis, there has been a general divide in economic performance (and consequentially in preference on economic policy) between a "southern bloc" and a "northern bloc". Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece and also France all did horribly while the Netherlands, the UK, Germany, Austria, the Nordics and most of Eastern Europe did better, many of them drastically better. (The UK is struggling since Brexit and Eastern Europe also benefits from coming from a lower level with cheaper wages and more growth potential.)

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jun 12 2024 05:42am

This is why my family didn't emigrate to America. The NHS provide insulin and care for my brother with diabetes. It would literally cost hundreds of thousands per year, just to stay alive in the US.
The flipside is obviously the tax burden of the NHS.

Countries like Italy and Greece were hurt by the introduction of Euro. They could always devaluate their currency by printing more because they needed cheap costs to make good exports attractive and to be a nice place for vacation. After the euro introduction, prices became too high for the export, so instead of making everything very expensive to match the prices with the income the income stagnated otherwise people from western and northern Europe wouldn't venture there and export prices for foods would be too high. Stagnated income => no extra money to stimulate the inland economy. Same thing is happening to Croatia. Croatia was a really nice tourism destination until the Euro was introduced.

Very true. The other side of the coin is that the euro has been too weak for Germany. This was bad for two reasons. First, it artificially increased the competitiveness of German export-oriented corporations. While propping up the German economy in the short-run, this has made their companies fat and complacant and allowed them to slack off in terms of innovation and investment, which has come back to haunt them in recent years. Second, the weak euro has robbed the ordinary Germans of purchasing power gains which they would normally have reaped based on the strength of their economy.


At the end of the day, the euro is an ill-conceived construct which tries to tie together economies with too different structures, priorities and fiscal traditions. And just for the record: the Eurocrats who introduced it knew this very well and ahead of time. They deliberately went through with the euro nonetheless because they predicted the economic divide to necessitate further European integration, which they strongly welcomed. They saw the common currency as a trojan horse which would eventually force Germany (and the other fiscally hawkish nations) into a full-blown fiscal-, debt -and transfer-union.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jun 12 2024 10:06am

It is very convenient for the wealthy and powerfull because people are simply too busy fighting to pay their rent, saving their own ass, or even tackling each others at working place.

"self made" and "individual independance" along with a touch of "freeeedom" is an heavy, almost alienating, narrative completely supported by the powerful & wealthy (of course) since decades and precisely: It has been denounced by some very serious american sociologs and/or economists last years

No time to find the wikii but well.

The real success belongs to a fine balance in-between - the collective - and - the individual-.

The collective helps the individual to developp itself, and not the individual getting screwed 95% of the time in a collective which is largely hold by a very tiny part of the whole population.

/e The myth of individualism

This post was edited by Meanwhile on Jun 12 2024 11:33am

Economic comparisons between various countries suggest France is already erring too far on the collective side. Pretty much all the industrialized countries which are doing better than them are more individualistic, have lower taxes, more economic freedom and less statism. Just sayin'...

Try to find "indicators" somewhere else than France because i'm French, eventually.

It's all about balance, in-between illusory communism and toxic individualism, both are destroying society.
Lmk that "America has the best healthcare system" yes: the best phentanyl & opoid treatments.
Accident, money loss, then people suddently change their mind. The same for Far right.

Hungary’s Orbán shows weakest performance in EU elections in 20 years
https://apnews.com/article/hungary-orban-eu-election-517b6b290d566ed4110f77f4a83ca3bb




This post was edited by Meanwhile on Jun 12 2024 01:32pm