The Wlz (which replaced the AWBZ) covers only a minority of total health care costs. Expenses were €29 bln in 2023. "Mostly privatized" is accurate.

Both the Netherlands and Switzerland have universal health care systems and negligible rates of lack of insurance. My point is just that private health insurance isn't the (only) problem, as these counterexamples show.

Actually, many of those countries don't have systems similar to Medicare for All. Netherlands, supposedly second in this list, has a mostly privatized system with mandatory insurance, so does Switzerland. France and Germany have semi-public and private health insurance companies. The US has bigger (and different) problems than merely the existence of health insurance companies.

For a laugh (and cry), you can have a look at which countries are above the US in terms of life expectancy. It includes the likes of Maldives, Costa Rica, Panama and Oman.

Discard the Brownshirts, their collaborators, and the Putin fluffers, and you probably won't have many choices left.

Where I'm from there has been a minimum income guarantee since 1965. In fact, the constitution says the government should ensure every resident has sufficient income to live. A single-person household with someone who is permanently unemployed receives about $1500 per month (you receive additional money per child). This is the lowest income a legal resident is allowed to have. Every rich European country has a similar system, though most opt to cover rent for the poorest, and give a smaller amount for the remaining expenses.

It turns out that willingness to work isn't an issue, because most people don't actually like to do nothing. The employment rate is far higher than in the US.

It's pretty funny to me to see Americans claiming that a full-time job should be sufficient to have your basic needs met - as if the unemployed should live in dire poverty.

$500 billion is a sizable chunk of that $6.3 trillion, and it's still only a 25% tax rate, and then only the "ultra-rich."

If one considers something more reasonable, like a 70% tax of income over $100,000, then you're talking about more substantial amounts to really start catching up to top economies.

The RCP website is full of garbage partisan puff pieces. But a poll average is just a poll average. It was super close in the 2022 midterms.

I don't know how anyone could've missed that Trump is moron, but if voters are indeed only now catching on, there's no sign of it yet in polling.

I wasn't saying favourability ratings should be used to predict elections. For that you have polls (in which Trump has a substantial but not decisive lead). I was just responding to the comment about who is more unpopular.

I think that people who respond to pollsters overwhelmingly know that Trump was president before, and clearly it doesn't bother them what a train wreck that presidency was. It's not clear to me how they would suddenly start realizing that closer to election day.

I remember. The polls were accurate. The pundits were not. People were shocked because they didn't want to believe that there are really that many loathsome morons around, not because they looked at what polls said.

Here are the main polls for that race on the eve of the election. What they actually said was that the race was close to a tossup, with Clinton perhaps very slightly favoured to win.

Here and here are favourability ratings. As you can see, Trump's are substantially less negative.

The polling wasn't off in 2016, it was actually super accurate and missed the result by only one point.

Trump isn't popular, but he doesn't need to be, he just needs to be less unpopular than Biden, and right now polling is suggesting that he is exactly that.

The hydro power helps, sure. But Norway is big, cold, and sparsely populated.

All cars were new cars once. If a majority of new cars are EVs, then it is only a matter of time before most used cars are as well.

It's not (just) a matter of money. Even in China a third of new vehicles are EVs, and Estonia is much richer than China.

EVs already attained mass adoption. In Norway almost all new cars are EVs. Several countries are not far behind. Most countries are more suitable for EVs than Norway.

As for taxes, I do it in a few minutes through the free government-provided online portal.

Then again, you probably don't have to sign so many Datenschutzerklärungen...

In the Eurozone private banks simply have to facilitate wire transfers to other accounts free of charge and instantly. People do it through their bank's app or website, usually. This is regulated through the SEPA.

Actually, we're not a long way off from that. Hydrogen production facilities utilizing (excess) renewable electricity output are under construction as we speak. For example, a large project in Kazakhstan (which has large stretches of windy, sunny and empty steppes) is aiming to be online in 2030 with 30 GW of production going towards green hydrogen.

Income inequality can just be set through fiscal policy. It doesn't matter how much "cash" the rich want to hoard if they can't do it (as much) because it was already taxed.