馃攳
David Cross: Why America Sucks at Everything - YouTube
Channel: unknown
[0]
[piano instrumental]
[4]
[televison jingle]
[19]
[static]
[20]
America is the greatest country on Earth!
[23]
The strongest,
[25]
the richest,
[25]
the most powerful country on Earth.
[28]
As an American, I'm sure you've heard that
[29]
roughly 135 times a year.
[32]
235 if you go to public school
[34]
335 if you go to a christian academy
[37]
We're told that Americans have the best lives
[39]
of any people in the world.
[41]
That we have low taxes,
[42]
small government,
[43]
and the highest living standards on Earth.
[46]
And, most inaccurately, that we're the freest.
[49]
Well it is partly true,
[51]
America is the richest country,
[53]
not just in the world, but in the history of the world.
[56]
It's really hard to聽comprehend聽just how rich we are.
[59]
We have 18 million people who are millionaires.
[63]
American households own about 100 trillion dollars
[67]
in wealth, an almost unthinkable amount of money
[70]
Okay, so America is the richest country ever
[74]
but there's a curious paradox.
[76]
most Americans actually have a much worse
[79]
standard of living than people who live
[80]
in poorer countries like
[82]
Germany, or Finland, or Britain.
[84]
But how can that be?
[85]
That shouldn't make any sense.
[87]
Well, here's the shitty deal.
[89]
Americans get significantly worse services
[92]
because our tax dollars don't fund them.
[95]
So of course our services are worse
[97]
and thus, we enjoy less happy lives than
[99]
people who live in the aforementioned countries.
[102]
Not that difficult a concept to conceive, really.
[104]
"You get what you pay for!" said the cartoon dog
[107]
to the other cartoon dog.
[109]
And while you might think the reason American
[111]
tax dollars don't fund as many services
[113]
is because we pay lower taxes than other countries
[117]
that's not even true!
[118]
When you add federal,聽
state,聽local, and sales taxes and
[121]
include other costs and聽services聽that our taxes don't cover
[124]
but other countries taxes do,
[126]
like our uniquely high health insurance premiums,
[129]
you'll find that Americans actually give away
[132]
MORE of their wages than聽most聽of the developed world.
[135]
For example,
[137]
in Canada, for a married worker with two kids,
[139]
all the previously mentioned costs combined,
[141]
from taxes to health insurance premiums,
[143]
make up only 11 of the average wage
[146]
in the uk it's just about 26%.
[149]
Meanwhile, once you tack on the cost of
[151]
our outlandish health insurance premiums,
[154]
you're spending a whopping 43% of your paycheck
[158]
that's more than France Finland Sweden and Norway.
[161]
In real reality, Americans keep much less of
[164]
what we own than in other countries.
[166]
In other countries,
[167]
their government takes a bit more tax
[169]
but then gives that money back to their citizens
[171]
in the form of health care,
[173]
or job support,
[174]
or a general safety net for
[176]
all vulnerable citizens,
[177]
no matter how dusky they are.
[180]
So what do Americans get for the money we pay in?
[184]
Well sure, we get
[185]
a crumbling infrastructure,
[186]
shameful homelessness,
[187]
and millions of hungry, neglected children
[190]
BUT we also get some of the worst services in
[193]
the developed world.
[195]
Again, our healthcare.
[197]
American healthcare聽
is聽simultaneously the most expensive,
[200]
the least efficient,
[201]
and the least effective healthcare system in
[204]
the developed world.
[205]
He-hey! The devil's trifecta.
[208]
and in exchange for this extremely expensive,
[211]
inefficient healthcare system, what do we get?
[213]
Well we get some of the worst health outcomes
[215]
in the developed world.
[216]
We have fewer hospital beds per capita
[218]
than people in Turkey or Brunei
[221]
americans have a lower life expectancy than
[223]
people in Lebanon or Cuba
[225]
and in the Mississippi聽Delta,聽
and much of Appalachia?
[229]
Life expectancy is lower than in Bangladesh.
[233]
In fact, in 2017, the United Nations sent
[237]
a commissioner to West Virginia to document
[239]
what he saw and he described
[242]
"third world conditions聽of absolute poverty."
[245]
We even have a higher infant mortality rate
[248]
than people in Russia and Serbia.
[251]
In every single metric, America does worse
[256]
across the board.
[258]
So why is healthcare so expensive?
[261]
Because it's so complicated.
[263]
You have to look for in-network physicians,
[265]
schedule an established care appointment,
[266]
beg for coverage from your insurance company
[268]
that couldn't care less about you,
[270]
and that's if you're lucky聽enough聽
to have good insurance!
[273]
Compare that to Britain, and all of those other
[275]
evil socialist-like countries
[277]
where it's simple:
[279]
public hospitals provide聽
free聽treatment to people who need it.
[283]
That's it
[284]
I'll repeat that.
[285]
Public hospitals provide聽
free聽treatment to people who need it.
[290]
And here's the best part:
[292]
even though britain offers health care for free
[294]
their system is actually a lot cheaper to run
[296]
than ours.
[297]
Per capita healthcare聽spending in the U.S. is almost
[300]
three times what it is in Britain,
[301]
and almost five times what Canadians spend.
[304]
In fact Americans spend the most per person
[307]
of any country in the world for health care.
[310]
"But the free market is more efficient" you screech.
[313]
But in America, private systems聽often aren't efficient at all
[317]
private drug companies have an incentive to
[319]
charge whatever they can get聽away with for pharmaceuticals.
[322]
In Canada, a carton of insulin costs about 20 bucks.
[327]
In the U.S. it costs 300 bucks.
[330]
And with private insurance聽companies footing the bill,
[332]
hospitals have an incentive to get as much money
[335]
out of patients as possible too.
[337]
In 2015 the average cost of an mri scan
[341]
in the U.S. was $1119.
[345]
But it was only $215 in Australia.
[349]
Spain? About 181 bucks.
[351]
And our health care system is so inefficient
[354]
that we spend over a third of聽our costs on-
[357]
administration.
[359]
The United States spends significantly more
[361]
on administration than we spend on preventative
[364]
or long-term health care.
[366]
That's just not smart
[369]
"Okay, we get it. We all know聽that American health care
[372]
is so much more expensive," you say.
[374]
"But that's the cost of having the freest freedom
[377]
in God's favorite country!"
[379]
Well... guess what?
[380]
Medical procedures聽that are totally free in Britain,
[384]
like giving birth,
[385]
cost tens of thousands聽of dollars in the United States.
[389]
I mean you want to talk about the cost of freedom.
[391]
Sadly, because of these high costs,
[393]
Americans often avoid going to the doctor,
[395]
something almost half the population say they do.
[398]
with shoddy or聽non-existent health insurance,
[401]
Americans will wait until their聽conditions force them into
[403]
the emergency room, where treatment is
[405]
far more expensive.
[407]
Again, not a smart system.
[410]
Quite often, they end up putting聽off medical visits and dying.
[414]
Susan Finley, a 53 year old聽Walmart employee in Colorado,
[418]
got pneumonia and took one day off of work
[420]
beyond what Walmart's policy allows.
[423]
So of course, Walmart's going to Walmart
[425]
which they did, by firing her.
[427]
Without her job she lost her nominal health care coverage,
[430]
she struggled to find new work,
[432]
and after avoiding a visit to the doctor for
[434]
flu-like symptoms, she was聽found dead in her apartment.
[441]
When Americans do manage to get treated,
[444]
they frequently can't afford it.
[446]
Simple, life-saving treatments can cost
[448]
tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars and
[450]
if they don't have really good insurance
[451]
they're forced to take on medical debt.
[453]
Tens of millions of Americans owe medical debt,
[456]
often into the tens of thousands of dollars.
[458]
Meanwhile in a country like Britain or Norway,
[461]
Medical debt is almost unheard of.
[464]
But hey, that's why GoFundMe is such a critical
[467]
component of American health care.
[469]
One in three GoFundMe campaigns聽is now for medical bills.
[473]
I'll repeat that,
[474]
one in three GoFundMe campaigns聽
is now for medical bills.
[478]
America is such a strong,聽powerful, rich, and great country
[482]
that its citizens have to聽beg strangers on the internet
[485]
for money so they can get life-saving treatments
[488]
that are FREE in the rest of the developed world.
[493]
But hey, that's just healthcare.
[495]
Americans get terrible deals wherever you look.
[497]
Let's take work, for example.
[500]
Americans work longer hours than people in
[502]
any other rich country in the world,
[503]
and that's not because they聽enjoy sleep deprivation
[506]
and not seeing their families for days at a time.
[508]
It's because they don't want聽to starve, or freeze, or die.
[513]
See, America has the least聽generous job support programs,
[516]
the least generous family benefits,
[518]
and the least generous unemployment benefits
[520]
of any wealthy country.
[522]
It's one of the only countries on Earth
[524]
that doesn't guarantee paid time off for vacations.
[527]
It doesn't even help provide聽paid time off for parents
[529]
who JUST had a child.
[531]
And it's not coincidental that we're also
[533]
one of the most hostile聽countries to workers rights.
[536]
America has one of the lowest unionization rates
[539]
in the entire world.
[540]
Maybe this deprivation, our refusal to give people
[544]
the means to lead a good, dignified life, commensurate
[546]
with how rich our country is,
[548]
can explain a bit of what we've seen in the United States
[551]
over the last few decades.
[552]
Fraying communities,
[553]
rising rates of depression and suicide,
[556]
huge numbers of deaths from drug overdoses.
[558]
These so-called "deaths of despair,"
[560]
suicide,
[561]
drug overdoses,
[562]
alcoholic liver disease,
[564]
they're one big reason why聽American life expectancy
[567]
has actually started to聽
decline over the last few years.
[571]
And with such poor conditions, it's not a surprise
[574]
that poverty is so rampant in the United States.
[577]
America devotes a smaller percentage of
[579]
spending on social welfare than any other
[581]
industrialized economy because,
[584]
say it with me,
[585]
socialism is evil.
[587]
It's evil!
[589]
Go to Denmark and try telling those
[591]
happy, healthy families聽enjoying their paid vacation
[593]
that their system of government is evil.
[597]
Guess what?
[598]
I guarantee they'll聽know you're an American
[602]
But I digress,
[603]
America also has the highest rate of child poverty
[606]
of any developed country,聽and the highest percentage
[609]
of workers earning significantly less than
[611]
the national median income.
[613]
THAT seems pretty evil to me.
[615]
Especially since such a tiny fraction
[617]
take as much of your money from themselves
[619]
and their families as you will let them.
[622]
All the while both parties smile
[624]
and shake hands.
[626]
Across every single metric,
[628]
no people accept a worse deal than Americans today.
[632]
high taxes,
[633]
high costs of living,
[634]
for next to nothing in return from the government.
[637]
The most expensive health care system,
[638]
for the worst health outcomes.
[641]
More money taken from workers,
[642]
for the highest rate of child poverty.
[645]
We are the richest country聽in the history of the world,
[647]
but we have fewer miles of聽high-speed rail than Uzbekistan.
[652]
We are the greatest country in the world,
[654]
yet we have the most people聽in prison of any country
[656]
and the highest incarceration rate as well.
[659]
And a higher rate of police聽killings than in Angola, and Sudan.
[664]
America is bad at everything because
[666]
instead of choosing to make life better
[668]
for people,
[668]
through a public health care system or
[671]
more generous child care policies,
[672]
or better public transit,
[673]
or programs that allow people to
[675]
spend more time with their families,
[677]
American law is designed and crafted
[679]
to protect a class of聽parasitical middleman industries.
[682]
Instead of using a proportionally tiny piece
[685]
of the massive amount of聽the wealth in this country
[687]
to make people's lives healthier and happier.
[691]
Most of our elected leaders are,
[693]
and have been for generations,
[694]
engaged in a massive project of
[696]
looting.
[697]
Gently and lovingly guiding as much money as possible
[701]
from working people into the
[702]
pockets of the well-connected and the ultra-rich.
[705]
Think about that as we start hearing about
[708]
the inevitable rise in
[709]
homelessness,
[710]
poverty,
[711]
starvation,
[712]
and sickness that will occur during
[714]
these coming months and years
[716]
in the greatest,
[718]
strongest,
[719]
richest,
[719]
most powerful country
[721]
on the face of the Earth
[726]
I'm David Cross, for the Gravel Institute.
[729]
[Techno music plays]
Most Recent Videos:
You can go back to the homepage right here: Homepage