"WTF is wrong with Americans? This guy nails it"

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Yes plenty of people die due to being unable to afford proper treatment..I mean yeah if you go to the Emergency Room in a hosptial they have to help, but then you might end up in hopeless debt when you get the bill..and depending on what condition got you there it may very well make it even harder to afford ongoing treatment for it so yeah they wont leave someone dying on a hospital bed if they can save them that time but not having access to proper treatment due to cost contributes to the death though in some situations people commit suicide before their condition kills them because they can't afford treatment or to pay their debt.

As for student loans they aren't socialist at all, just more corporate BS....they trick you into thinking you can go to college get a great job with your degree, encourage you take out very high loans that must be paid back....well what happens when there are no jobs in the field you studied for? then you're stuck with a ton of debt and no real way to pay it back. Its really just a trap it seems its not about getting an 'education' its about making social connections to cheat your way to the top....I'd almost go as far as saying its to weed out people that wouldn't make it in the corporate world because they hire more based on social connections then actual qualifications a lot of times with higher paying jobs. Its ridiculous, people are fine being oppressed by corporate america but if the government tries to regulate corporations and promote more social programs and starts serving the people instead of corporate lobbyists, then its an attack on our freedom according to some I would honestly prefer a more socialist system....but so long as its not totalitarian socialism and people still have a say.

Social security and Medicare will be insolvent In ten years? Where did you get such information?

If countries with tiny tax revenues can provide it, so can the largest economy in the world. America's GDP per capita is nearly $20,000 more than Finland's, so your talk about population sizes is misleading and irrelevant.

Major savings could be made by drastically cutting military spending and not sending so many people to prison. Tax increases for the rich and closing loopholes would also ensure more money ended up in the public purse. The policy would quickly pay for itself as skilled workers would earn more.

It isn't necessary to go as far as those nations, but your current policy is utterly insane and indefensible. You live in the second richest country in the world (per capita), but you have insane amount of student debt. The current system is broken and not working. A change is necessary or the country will collapse under the weight of the military budget.

No that is not what socialism is, Also being on welfare is not about trying to get 'freebies' from the government without having to do any work...its so people who cannot provide for themselves and/or their family have access to financial help so they can afford to live, most people on welfare are on it because they need the help. Don't be so damn ignorant.

Yes there are people who are fraudulent, that takes away resources from people who really need them so even people on welfare are not happy about that....but there are frauds in everything getting rid of all social welfare programs on account of a few frauds taking advantage would really only hurt the people who need it since the frauds could just go commit fraud in some other way.

Also yes america is a bigger country with more people than in scandinavian countries....which also means we probably have more money than those countries, to be accounting for our bigger population. So that is a flawed argument, if a scandinavian country was set up like the U.S essentially but a smaller version I am sure it would soon be experiencing the same problems we are. Its a matter of how resources and money are being used in those countries not that there is less people so they can afford it easier. The U.S wastes a lot of resources and money, compared to those countries.

Well, it is common knowledge.

However, the trustees who run these programs have testified about their projected insolvency.

Quoted: "Social Security's trust fund reaches insolvency in 2033 while Medicare will be insolvent by 2026 unless the U.S. Congress acts, the trustees' report said"
source, http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2013/05/ ... 370020498/

Right now 38% of all spending goes towards these two programs alone.

You can see here that they are the largest budget items (bigger than defense spending).
source, http://www.usdebtclock.org/

Take note:
The projected insolvency of Social Security's disability trust fund in 2016

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2013/05/ ... z31Wt7y1xo

I am not ignorant, but wise.

It is not about fraud. People make themselves fit the social program.

- I know people who divorce to make themselves seem poor on paper (the other spouse is wealthy, now one can get some welfare)
- I know people who divorce to get a dead ex-spouse's social security - if they don't yet qualify
- I know people who change their address from a wealthy home (say their parents) to a relative's home that is poor (so programs that look at household income will
see them as poor).
- I know people who quit their jobs to give the appearance of being poor, so they can qualify for aid of some kind.
- I know people who ride out unemployment, and don't bother looking for work.
- I know people who claim they injured themselves (sometimes lieing), get a chiropractor to sign off on it - one that knows the "game" - and onto welfare they go - forever

It would seem like human nature for people to examine every angle of social programs to figure out how they can get some of the free money.

Welfare pays better than minimum wage, so we would expect people working hard to get on welfare, rather than take a minimum wage job.
source, http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapotheca ... 35-states/

Umm those examples are all pretty much fraud, and if people get caught doing stuff like that the consequences aren't fun from what I understand. I still don't think those descriptions fit the majority of people on welfare. Also welfare varies....not entirely sure welfare would always be more than minimum wage, with my SSI I am pretty sure if I could get a minimum wage full time job I'd make more than I get with that maybe in some cases it is higher than minimum wage...however if someone is already making above minimum wage why would they bother trying to get welfare aside from fraudulent reasons like simply getting more money. So what do you mean its not about fraud?

Also though in my case my welfare will be reviewed, they do check up on people on disability to determine if they are still too disabled to work...so if someone fakes a physical injury there is a good chance they could be found out....also if you know someone committing fraud, report them of course they should face consequences but getting rid of welfare in general would really only hurt people who need it. If I knew someone who was faking I'd most certainly report them since that is not good for people who need the welfare.

The situations you describe are fraud.

However, most welfare payments are not fraudulent. It's an overwhelming majority, actually. And it's mostly the retired doing the claiming.

This uses figures from the UK, but I am sure it is a similar story in the US: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dr-simo ... 47000.html
]This is a serious problem - those states clearly need to raise the minimum wage, and take minimum-wage earners out of taxation. I strongly suspect that those figures are misleading though. The authors probably haven't accounted for in-work welfare payments.

And really, guys, I hope this happens. I hate this country so goddamn f*****g much. It is full of such f**ktards that it really needs to be razed to the ground. Hell, I might be here when it happens and when it does I'll be cheering until my breath is robbed from me in the destruction.

Then when the Replacers come, the society they will build here will far exceed ours in justness. Too bad we Americans currently here won't be around to see it, because all over the world Americans and those who had lived in the U.S. or had ancestors who lived in the U.S. will be hunted down and exterminated to finally rid the world of this filth. Don't think our conquerors will show us the same mercy we showed the Japanese and Germans after WW2, because we will not deserve it. The Replacers will then show the world how it is done.

/\ Get a grip!

if you actually personally know not one, but several people who do one/all of these things, then you know some seriously sh***y people. either you're a poor judge of character or you live in vegas/a prison/the seventh circle of hell and the acquaintance pool from which you draw, character-wise, is lamentably shallow.

By the standards of industrialized nations the US does not have high taxes.

And there is no such program as "welfare". There are individual programs that usually have requirements and a lifetime limit.

This is American life where I live near Detroit. It is relatively poor people.

My income is probably higher than 99% of the people in the area. My old supervisor - who is from Detroit - told me, "I could buy a whole city block in Detroit".

One neighbor is a drug dealer of some kind - cars are always waiting in the street for some reason. Police have been over his house warning him several times. Homes in the area are valued between 30,000-70,000, and at least two on my street are always in foreclosure. The neighbor across from me is in foreclosure now. Two times the home has been broken into and items were stolen. Items have been stolen from my neighbor and from us.

I live in the real world.

It is not illegal to get a divorce to qualify for welfare.
It is not illegal to get a divorce to qualify for your ex-spouse's social security benefits.
It is not illegal to change your address.
It is not illegal to quit one's job.
It is not illegal to qualify for disability/welfare with a doctor's written statement.
It is not illegal to ride out jobless benefits.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when comes to "working the system" to get free money. I am sure experts could point out many other ways
to get the welfare money.

People would think you are "chump" if you aren't trying to get the free money.

The Replacers are already here. They are the younger generation of Americans, and they will peacefully replace the older generation, and replace the values and policies of the older generation. I've had this feeling for a while, on many social issues the US and Europe are headed in the same direction (gay marriage, weed, losing their religion), the US is just a few years behind. There was a Pew report from a while back about this (which I can't find at the moment) on the values differences between generations in the US. I think US politics will change a lot when the older voters die (I know it sounds nasty, but I am seeing the same right now in the Netherlands, religion is declining not because of people losing their religion but because of old people dying... and the Christian Democratic Party has been decimated over the last decade).

The US has been through difficult times before, I'm pretty optimistic that they will get their s**t together.