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Here's to America Tanking It's Economy Below 20% of the World's GDP! (lemmy.ca)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/boycottus@lemmy.ca
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America's flag with red MAGA top cap saying to Canada " I feel bad for you" Canada responds "I don't think about you at all"
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[–] 42 points 1 year ago* (11 children)

Every time I watch a clip of Fox News talking about Canada, it feels like watching the equivalent of what North Korea propaganda probably says about South Korea in their news. It is pure disinformation and propaganda trying to convince their audience that the outside world is different and scary and that they are in the best place in the world. They know their target audience hasn't and never will travel outside of their own state to know any better.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    "IN CANADA, YOU HAVE TO WAIT FOR HEALTHCARE"

    Me, waiting for healthcare in the US:

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago*

    Anyone who has ever had a serious medical issue in Canada knows our medical system is fantastic. Top doctors, machines and treatments.

    Where we drop the ball is on elective surgies, hip replacements, knees etc. People can pay to have this done privately or out of country if they have the money, but anything life threatening is handled very quickly and efficiently.

    I'm still happy to live in this system over America any day, but yeah, not sure why I hear that argument being used so much..

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    You might have to wait if what you have is a non life threatening condition as people who have a life-threatening condition will take priority over you no matter who you are. It is the trade-off for a more cost effective system. But after you've received your treatment you leave the hospital without even seeing a bill except maybe for a parking fee.

    Meanwhile in the US, unless you are wealthy enough to afford to pay for your own healthcare or at least a premium health insurance you are left to wait with life threatening conditions and might even be left to die by your insurance company who will purposefully delay until your death to maximize their profits. And then they'll still send you an eye-watering bill on top of having charged you a premium that is twice what Canadians pay in their taxes for their healthcare.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    That would make sense if your GP or specialist was also taking shifts in the ER, but they aren't. They aren't choosing between your hip replacement and the lawn dart embedded in a college kid's spleen.

    Your hip replacement is in line behind 274 other hip replacements. It is performed by a doctor who does nothing but routine surgeries, day in, and day out, and never touches an emergent patient.

    Private clinics exist and have shorter lines for those willing to pay. The government could admit their own line is too long and start paying those clinics to take their overflow. But they dont. Better to let you rot for three years than pay a private practice doctor to do it in a week.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Most USAnals live within 160km (100 miles) of their place of birth. 40% have never had a passport which is an increasingly accurate proxy, since the border tightenings of 2007, for having never left the country. Of those who've actually left, an overwhelming majority have only gone as far afield as Canada or Mexico. A significantly smaller fraction have gone as far afield as Europe. A very tiny fraction have gone anywhere truly distant and alien, culturally speaking.

    And yet these are the people who think they should rule the world.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Of those who’ve actually left, an overwhelming majority have only gone as far afield as Canada or Mexico.

    I mean, yeah, Canada and Mexico are zero kilometers away from the U.S., and there are a few island countries, but for the most part, to get to another country, people from the U.S. would have to travel to a whole other continent.

    If you want to be consistent, you'd need to compare what percentage of people from each other contintent have travelled to another continent, and you'd need to consider what percentage of people on other continents live close to another continent.

    I am not saying that most people in the U.S. have experience with international travel, just that to illustrate your point, I think you've gone too far and included some information which doesn't actually distinguish the U.S. quite as much as you think.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    You're missing a key point here.

    Of course there's more people travelling to neighbouring countries than non-neighbouring ones. Simple cost explains that.

    But there's no real meaningful increase in costs between flying to Europe and flying to Asia, say. Doing a quick eyeball check, ticket prices from NYC to Seoul, for example, are about $400-500. Flights from NYC to Frankfurt are about $200-300. South Korea, however, is significantly cheaper than Germany for tourism. Depending on whose numbers you go by, SK is anywhere from 33% to 50% cheaper than Germany for tourism, so the extra $200 for the tickets is more than made up for in literally two days of actually being in the country.

    Costs scale roughly the same across Europe, and SK is kind of the middle of the pack costs-wise for Asia, so it's a decent proxy. (Japan is more expensive, China and Vietnam are cheaper.)

    Yet far more people fly to Europe, when they bother going beyond North America, than to Asia. Meaning far more people are flying to places that are culturally not that different from their own, comparatively, despite the fact that the latter is cheaper. By far.

    (How far? A friend of mine in Canada came to visit me for two months one summer and worked out that they'd turned a profit, despite the then very high air fares, after the first month just in savings on electricity and food costs living at home.)

    USAnals are very parochial (40% never having had a passport), and when they do step outside of their parochial bounds, they go to places that are very similar to home anyway, even when places that are actually different cost less.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    I'm really not sure europe is very different there, beyond the fact that european countries as a whole are more culturally diverse than US states, or the US vs. Canada. And even then many people only travel to tourist destinations within europe that won't let you really experience a different local culture anyway.

    It's still probably true that europeans experience a bit more cultural diversity because it's just easier to do, but I find it hard to blame the american people for that when so many are too poor to even think of traveling far, and experiencing something other than canada or mexico is significantly harder than to go e.g. from germany to romania.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago*

    Once met a guy, in his 50’s, in North Carolina who had only left his small town once. He didn’t like it so has never left it since. He lived an hour from the coast, so he planned a trip to the ocean for a long weekend, he got there and could not stand the noise of the waves, so he went home early the next day.

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