Comments by "LRRPFco52" (@LRRPFco52) on "Senator Bernie Sanders"
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Finland’s 5.5 million up well above 60 degrees north latitude, with long winters and 188,000 lakes, sharing a massive border with Russia, does not even remotely face or solve our toughest issues in the US. Two totally different geographies, climates, genetics, cultures, living styles, languages, and basically every metric for how you would measure a nation or society.
This is why any comparison between tiny Finland up on top of the earth, and the 3rd largest population in the world in the temperate zone with better coastlines than any other nation, connected river networks, huge mountain ranges, etc. doesn’t even make the least bit of sense.
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@you6382tube Geography and climate determine culture. Policies are wishlist ideas from people who aren't educated about the core fundamentals, and spin their wheels crying about what they can't have.
This isn't off in the weeds, but at the heart of the real numbers. For example:
Finland has 188,000 lakes of very clean fresh water that are frozen over during the long winters.
Finns are the offspring of centuries of tough people who survived each winter. The weak ones died and didn't get to reproduce until modern luxuries like indoor plumbing, electricity, and heating.
Finland has access to the sea with half the border being coastline, but no mountain ranges. If you look at it in detail on a map, you will see the glacial recession finger lake topography everywhere.
Now take Wisconsin with roughly the same population (5.8 million vs 5.5m Finland), a bit colder climate, partially on the Great Lakes. It has a higher GDP, more EMS and hospital infrastructure, more Life Flight Helicopters, more Doctors, nurses, pharmacies, specialty clinics, dentists, etc.
Would you tell Wisconsin they should be more like Finland?
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@terriej123 So more EMS equals more sickness in your view, not more infrastructure? Median household income is dramatically higher in Wisconsin, and most people are on private insurance through their employers, with greater access to more medical/dental services.
You have to ask why that system works better, after Finns are taxed so heavily for NHS.
Air Ambulances are used to save lives, whether they're car accident victims, kids choking, falling injuries, poisonings, farming accidents, outdoor recreation accidents, etc.
Finns don't own anywhere near as many automobiles because of the price of gas, taxes, and public transportation.
Wisconsin has 860 automobiles/1000 people.
Finland is unusually high in Europe at 790/1000. Germany is only 628, while Sweden is only 545.
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@ullasofia9432 We know social democracy doesn’t work. One of the worst principles you can adopt in government is to govern by majority-rules. If 51% of the people vote to have a specific right taken away, then it becomes law. That’s amateur-level governance and extremely bad policy.
Socialism has failed in every nation that adopts it as the primary mechanism of economic and political function. None of the European "socialist democracies” are actually governed by pure socialism. I think everyone who has studied economics recognizes all systems are hybrid in nature.
For starters, the most important role of the state (defense), was handled by the United States post-WWII. US force presence in Europe was gargantuan, with military bases filled with fighters, tanks, artillery, and theater ballistic missiles all over the continent.
This allowed Europe to re-build, with billions of US loans and aid packages, and focus on more of a free-market economy that later evolved into an international coalition of quasi-free markets, with a shared exchange and cross-border travel agreement. I still remember Europe when you had to show passports every time you crossed a border, and couldn’t just live or work anywhere you want.
Social Democracy is a very naive concept in political philosophy that doesn’t square well with market and cultural realities. Those are dictated by geography, climate, and demographics (age/male/female balance).
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@ullasofia9432 As I have looked at the metrics, I don't accept the premise that they are "happier". How does one scientifically measure happiness, for example? Sounds like a fool's errand, but trust the experts, they know! See how silly that is?
And again, these "happier" countries with tiny homogenous populations that watch state-owned media, are propped-up by the US in many ways, Healthcare, industry, and defense being key pillars to their economies, while people on the US don't even realize how much they contribute to these nations.
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Everything that is being told about Finland (5/5 million people), or manipulated into a message about how to do things in the US (330 million people, temperate zone, connected river networks, provides much of Finland’s defense, etc.) is erroneous and incorrectly portrayed.
I have lived in Finland at various times since 1979, since my mom is from there. It’s a wonderful country if you like the cold and long, dark winters, lots of forest, 188 000 lakes, and quiet people. I would choose US healthcare over Finnish any day of the week, or use the Finnish private sector. US VA hospitals are better than Finnish hospitals, which is saying something.
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@huuppone Another thing you will see is that infant mortality and life expectancy will always be lower in a giant sample size of a 330 million diverse population, than a 5.5 million, or 82 million, or 10 million relatively homogenous populations. That is basic statistics, nothing to do with the types of healthcare.
US isn't far behind in any of those metrics either. They're all very close with minimal standard deviations and extreme spreads, with multiple variables like diet, exercise, stress, and accidents that are the prime factors, not types of healthcare systems.
Finland has an extremely high ownership rate of lake cottages, for example, called kesämökit. They also have high rates of sauna bathing, which is great for your health.
They are relatively healthy despite their inefficient and dated NHS, not because of it.
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@leiflillandt1488 For EMS in the US, there is such a thing called Life Flight. One of the nearest Level 1 Trauma Centers near me has 2 Life Flight helicopters. They are staffed with a Flight Medic who is a Paramedic with additional life-saving skills, most of which have been pioneered in the military. You are in a far better position in the US if you live far from a Level 1 Trauma Center than in many places in Europe.
Most distant or rural towns simply don't have good trauma infrastructure because it's extremely expensive, requires dedicated staff with trauma surgery training and equipment. This is reality anywhere in rural US, Canada, and Europe. That's why we have Life Flights.
Finland has FinnHEMS Air Ambulance services with 5 EC135 helicopters for the whole nation.
My State in the US has a much smaller population than Finland, and we have 6 Life Flight Helicopters covering roughly 65% of Finland's land area, so we have more Life Flight Helos for a smaller population over smaller area.
You find this same ratio playing out when you look at costs, quality of care, and availability of care. Finland does not compare well in reality.
In a political confirmation bias approach like Senator Sanders uses, it seems to have merits, but with a detailed analysis, these fall apart quite quickly.
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@rafm3068 We are repeatedly brow-beaten with claims about utopian life in Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Canada when it comes to healthcare/NHS. So yes, these claims are very common in the public discourse in the US and must be refuted with mathematical analyses.
Life expectancy is higher in Greece, Portugal, Spain, Hong Kong, Japan, Switzerland, Singapore, Australia, Iceland, South Korea, Israel, Sweden, France, Malta, Canada, Norway, Ireland, New Zealand, Netherlands, and Luxembourg when compared to Finland. Would you conclude that all of those countries have better healthcare than Finland? Some do, some don’t.
United States (79.05 years), with its 335 million population, is within 3.26 years of Finland (82.31 years) for life expectancy. From a mathematical and statistical analyses position, that tells me the US has something better overall that is able to maintain such a high life expectancy over such a massive and ethnically-diverse population. The US is the only top 10 nation among the largest populations in the world with high life expectancy. Japan, with its 11th highest population, is the only other high life expectancy population of the top 60 nations in the world (that range from 73.65 - 85.16 years). None of the top 10 world populations fall within the top 60 except for the US. This is immensely-significant from a mathematical perspective.
We typically see ethnic factors playing a big role in life expectancy, even when standard of living might be lower, though clean water and modern medical services do play some role that can’t be ignored.
The question is, if I applied US healthcare options to Finland, would Finland’s life expectancy increase? Since there are far more specialists and healthcare options in the US, more EMS services even in States with smaller populations that Finland, I propose that Finland would benefit with higher standard of living by continuing to adopt more US healthcare options.
I also would expect to see higher standard of living if more people in the US had access to summer cabins and sauna baths, but the cabin option just isn’t a reality because of population density and geography in many areas.
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@rafm3068 Developing nations tend to be closer to the tropics, so tribalism and low standards of education are the norm. Temps are hot, access to clean water is extremely limited, life expectancies are low, home construction often involves repurposed trash, violent revolutions are common, everything is quite versatile.
Ideas about government structure are relatively meaningless because corruption will be the norm, no matter who is helping them. The US has lifted up many of these nations since World War II, brought in more stability, plugged them into global trade, allowed free passage of their students to the US and other developed nations, and subsidized most of their economic growth.
Amateurs talk about policy and forms of government. Analysts look at real data with dispassionate mathematical observations and metrics.
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Sanders is a fraud who kept running for public office until idiots finally elected him mayor. He was living in a root cellar stealing electricity from his neighbors with an extension cord, but somehow he has the answers to large scale problems. Reminds me of Karl Marx. Everything is always someone else’s fault, and he’s here to distract from the fact that he offers nothing, while wanting to take from people that work harder, rather than allow them to manage charity organically.
He steered this conversation away from the core realities that make Finland what it is (not a Utopia, no the happiest place), which revolve around its 188,000 lakes, forests, clean air, super clean water pumped in from the lakes, sauna bathing, quiet people, and hundreds of years of winter hardening them against the elements.
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@Tespri When you scale the supply chain for real estate, you see what a huge industry it is. Since Finland suffered from negative population growth before importing Somalis, it might not seem that big. Concrete, timber, hardware, electrical, plumbing, appliances, fixtures, windows, heating, roofing, insulation, etc. start to stack up volumetrically into a multi-billion market even in tiny nations.
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@msaar1303 US spends billions doing Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation on them. Finland and other nations buy drugs, equipment, and military hardware at bulk, discounted rates.
For example, with the F-35A deal, it was lower cost than the Saab Gripen package. There has been over $62 Billion RDT&E put into the F-35 program, and Finland's Block 4 F-35As will have had many billion more of US money invested in them between the contract date (Dec 2021) and fulfillment period (2026-2030). Additionally, Finland negotiated a 400 unit forward fuselage assembly deal, so Finland will be getting paid billions to make huge sections of F-35s for other customers.
Finnish taxpayer's bill for F-35 RDT&E: $0
Same is true for drugs, medical devices, diagnostic equipment like MRI, electronics, semiconductors, etc.
Finland doesn't live in a vacuum. Finland's biggest trade partner for many decades was Russia, because Russia built its rail network into Finland in the 1860s, which is a different, wider rail base than the rest of Europe. Finland is geographically isolated from mainland Europe by the Gulf of Finland and from Scandinavia by the Gulf of Bothnia.
The ground truth nuts and bolts are missing from these discussions, because politicians and media don't have the education to discuss them properly.
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@77sailordude How much of the F/A-18 RDT&E did Finland pay for from 1977-1995? How much of the $62 billion for F-35 RDT&E did Finland pay for from 1983-2021? US private companies and DoD budget combined to pay for that. Same for JASSM, AIM-9M/X, AIM-120C7, JDAM, etc. That’s the biggest defense package Finland has ever purchased, and all of it was developed with US money that Finland never had to pay for, other than the final products.
A very similar relationship exists in pharmaceuticals, medical devices, diagnostic equipment, and services. There are European-based research products as well for sure, but the US bears the weight of research and development for drugs, devices, diagnostic equipment, and processes. EU countries bundle together to purchase medical products from the US at bulk rates, while US States and hospitals get charged full retail much of the time.
Even still, the services and treatments available in the US are greater in quantity and quality, even when you only compare Finland with States that have a similar population size.
This should make sense to anyone who looks at the raw math, rather than listening to policy amateurs. 5.5 million people is a rounding error in the US (335 million).
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@77sailordude Nokia developed transistors, batteries, digital screens, and injection-molding machines? No, that’s all US technology. Data burst transmission? US encrypted Radio technology I used in the military all the time way before Nokia. Engineers in Nokia took data burst RF transmission, and packed it into the cell phone (US technology), marketed it in the private sector, and did really well until allowing themselves to be bought out.
This again reinforces my position that Finland benefits from US developments in defense, healthcare, telecomm, whatever. Finland is a ghost techno-vassal state of the US without any political obligations to the US, so it gets all the benefits with no sacrifice. US doesn’t know about this and doesn’t care, because again, 5.5 million people is a 1.6% rounding error.
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