Okay, thank you. I wasn’t sure. Why couldn’t they just pay them 50k and lobby for single payer to save money? It seems like you’re suggesting that they’d have to raise wages if single payer was implemented? Maybe I’m still confused, because it still seems like they’d save money in the long run?
Please forgive my ignorance on the topic. You seem to know a lot about it. Are you saying that they save more money than the insurance costs them?
Wow! Companies could sure save a lot of money if they lobbied for single-payer! I wonder why they don’t! 🤔
There’s a lot to unpack with that quote, and a full analysis requires us to consider the functions that opium served at the time Marx wrote. Asprin would not be invented for another 15 years after Marx died. Laudanum and morphine, both opiates, were extremely common pain-management tools of the era.
The full quote (supposing you like this particular translation), sheds some light on the context:
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
While I feel that the modern interpretation of (the snippet of) his quote is apropos, I think it’s also good to analyze what he was actually trying to say. These days I interpret Marx to be trying to essentially say “Religion serves as a painkiller for people exploited and/or alienated by a capitalist society.”
But I’m interested in hearing other perspectives, if you disagree!
Here’s some further reading on that particular quote. Bear in mind, I don’t necessarily agree with all the perspectives presented by them:
https://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2015/01/karl-marx-on-religion/comment-page-1/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people
https://cunninghamjeff.medium.com/karl-marx-was-a-capitalist-8a71138418fd#
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2021/04/identity-politics-opium-of-the-people
I’ve definitely considered opening a St. Paul Sandwich food truck or street-cart, but I do worry that it’s not my place to do so. People often catch flak for “cultural appropriation” these days, and I don’t want to offend, or be persecuted, as a white man selling a Chinese-American specialty.
Plus I’d have to give up my day job and take a big leap of faith. Now, I’ve never introduced the sandwich to anyone who didn’t end up enjoying it, once they tried it, but I’m just not confident enough that it would take off. Maybe I should just do it on weekends to test the waters?
Perhaps this means you’ve been called to spread the good news of the St. Paul Sandwich to other states…
You’re absolutely right, and it’s exactly why I’m here preaching! I don’t yet preach the gospel of St. Paul (the sandwich) to every single person I meet, but I’m working up to it.
I think what’s so maddening about the situation is that you can get egg foo young at nearly every Chinese take-out joint in the US, but only in Missouri are they willing to slap it on some cheap white bread for you. The best part is, it’s an incredibly cheap meal, that isn’t completely bereft of nutrition. When I lived in Missouri you could get a St. Paul sandwich for like… $2. It was always one of the cheapest things on the menu, and it saved my then-broke, kitchen-less ass more than once!
These days I just take the necessary ingredients to the restaurant with me, order the egg foo young, then assemble the sandwich right there on the takeout counter, while maintaining eye contact with the nearest employee. I think they’re getting the message.
The St. Paul sandwich is wildly underappreciated. I had never heard of it before I lived in Missouri, and after I left I found that, like me, most people have never even heard of it. It’s a sad state of affairs.
The St. Paul sandwich is a national treasure. It’s a uniquely American food that only exists by dint of the “melting pot” of cultures that we as a country used to count among our best features.
This is a pretty sad take from NdT, and it comes across as though he were attempting to dodge a question. Perhaps even to avoid being labeled, which is probably why you like it.
If 99% of the population were golfers, and 1% weren’t, there would almost certainly be a word for the people who didn’t golf. Same applies to theists. Up until very recently it would have been considered quite unusual to not be a theist.
Atheists did not decide on that label. The word is believed to have initially been pejorative.
That’s exactly what this is.
Consume, consumer!
that would be an opinion
the fact that either case is not fit for a business meeting/outing
would be an opinion
the fact that
an opinion
You seem to have a rather tenuous grasp on the difference between opinion and fact, yourself.
Thank you. Yes. Nethack is a great comfort game.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is fantastic for me, too. You can play it through your browser (or download it) here.
I have to say, though, there’s nothing quite like a game of Rogue. When I play it I’m instantly transported back to childhood. Rogue was my first real video game obsession as a kid. I found it on my grandfather’s Apple IIgs and was just blown away. I remember being so enthralled by how deep it felt at the time. I had transcribed the commands to a piece of paper so I didn’t have to consult the in-game docs constantly. I was terrible at it, and never got anywhere close to beating it back then, but even dying was fun. You can play it online here. Type ? (or F1) to see the list of commands.
While this isn’t specifically about “trans rights”, it does seem to indicate that linux may have an opinion on the subject.
I’m not sure about that, as I’ve seen conflicting information. Medicare has existed for around 60 years, and not only have patients been more satisfied with their care on average than people with private insurance, the costs have also been lower than private insurance overall. Couple those factors with metrics from the most recent study I was able to find on the cost of single payer, and the picture seems a bit muddier than you’re presenting it.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8170543/
https://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/how-much-more-than-medicare-do-private-insurers-pay-a-review-of-the-literature/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/universal-health-care-could-have-saved-more-than-330-000-u-s-lives-during-covid/
https://ysph.yale.edu/news-article/yale-study-more-than-335000-lives-could-have-been-saved-during-pandemic-if-us-had-universal-health-care/