Linkspam for 27-1-2010

[nwhyte]

• 
  Stop demanding that you get screwed
  The only hope you have of ever seeing another pay raise is if Congress passes health care reform. Without health care reform, the increasing cost of your health insurance will swallow this year's raise. And next year's raise. And pretty soon it won't stop with just your raise. Without health care

Comments

[scbutler]

Some economists say that's why US pay has been stagnant for a decade.

[applez]

I'm starting to suspect there's a deeply rooted suicide meme in mainstream US culture. It goes beyond mere irrational selfishness, it's almost a willful quest for apocalypse.

[pjc50]

The rapture?

The healthcare issue over there is poisoned by people thinking about desert; it seems that a lot of people believe that ill health is caused by morally inferior lifestyles, and that people are quite happy to disadvantage themselves in order to prevent people they see as undeserving from being "subsidised". Somehow a lot of these people seem to think of themselves as Christians. It all makes it very easy for the health insurance lobby to exploit them.

[hano]

It's looking more and more like US health reform is dead in the water. Obama's blown it; he's spent vast quantities of political capital for nothing, an epic failure onthe part of his administration. Put simply, if Obama can't change things even with a significant Senate and Congrssional majority then nothing's going to change. Which, in short, means that America is *over*. Which has potentially terrifying consequences for the rest of us.

[scbutler]

How has Obama blown it? He tried, and is continuing to try. The real failure is in the nihilism of the Republcans who won't back anything, and the selfishness of the so-called progressives who have to have things done their way or not at all.

Compromise is the only way anything has ever been accomplished in the US, but it's a lost art. That's not Obama's fault. It's all of ours.