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[–] 124 points 5 months ago (13 children)

A pal and I went to join a newly opened gym.

I says to the dude on the desk: "How much is the membership a month?"

The staff member says: "It's £50 per month each, or £75 for a couple"

I'm motioning my pal over, and I'm like "dude are we like boyfriends now?"

"yeah"

Turns back to the dude on the desk: "we'll take the couple's membership please".

Went cross code to save £12.50 a month each. Worth it.

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  • [–] 19 points 5 months ago (12 children)

    Holy shit, £50 a month? Is that a common/standard rate?

    At my work we have access to a $25 USD a month membership and I think that is even a bit too expensive for my taste...

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  • [–] 18 points 5 months ago*

    hahaha I pay $75 a month for my gym, and it's the cheapest in town.

    Prices are just different based upon what cost of living is where you live. That $25 sounds like a pretty good deal depending on whether or not it has a pool though.

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  • [–] 11 points 5 months ago (8 children)

    My local climbing gym is $70/mo
    That's why i don't climb

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    any gym membership has to compete with the cost of one of those door-frame pullup bars and some weights

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    I wanted to build a home gym too, but when you add the squat rack (realistically a two post one, not the proper big cage) and some sort of bench, it starts getting pretty expensive.

    Gyms vary in price a lot though. From like 19€ a month to like 70 or so I think. I asked someone if the expensive gym is less crowded, but apparently not. Problem is, everyone already knows about them, they've been around for much longer than the cheap gyms (of which one has been around for a decade or so)

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    I have a treadmill, squat rack, pull up bar, Olympic barbell and weights, protective flooring, A/C unit, sundry accessories (gloves, whiteboard, skipping rope). Probably about 2-3 grand.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    Gym memberships are a tax-free benefit where I come from so I can just pay for it from the company bank account and not pay any taxes, making it almost 50% cheaper than paying out the same amount in salary to myself. Meaning the 250€ annual membership is realistically more like 130€ in "real" (post-tax) money. If you don't do things through your own company, though, most employers pay a health/fitness benefit, often at the maximum allowed amount, which is 400€ a year. Usually it's paid through a system where you can only spend it on eligible tax-free services, like a gym membership, massage, going swimming, etc.

    Gym equipment, however, is unfortunately never a tax-free benefit and is instead considered a fringe benefit. Quite literally considered as part of an employee's income and taxed as such. So if I spent, say, 2k on equipment, that's the same as 15 years of gym membership at the current rate (which is already high for me because I live outside of the bigger cities that have the cheap gyms). Funnily enough, maintenance of a company's existing in-house gym is eligible for the aforementioned tax-free benefit, just buying new equipment isn't.

    Used equipment makes a large dent in the price, but if going for brand new, it takes so long to pay off, it's rarely worth it.

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  • [–] 53 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    I ain't gay, but 87 euros sure is a lot for a just one shot

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  • [–] 33 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    One might argue that dating a person with HPV puts you at risk as well. one might

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  • [–] 24 points 5 months ago (14 children)

    87 is not nothing??? Like what...

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  • [–] [S] 12 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    I'd respond gay for €87. I mean, I would respond that way anyways, but if I was straight I would too!

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Except there is now a legal record of you saying you're gay. That or you comitted fraud. And that paper gets handed to whoever is bearing the cost. Likely a government agency. Meaning the government keeps records of gay people. I would think twice about paying or not, regardless of me being gay or not.

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  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago (10 children)

    It's "nothing much" if the alternative is the risk of all the issues you can get from HPV.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago (9 children)

    I know people that wouldn't be able to afford it. You get that the consequnce to paywalled healthcare is having sick people and not people just sucking it up and paying? The real alternative is of course allegedly already spelled out by Mr. Mangione but maybe a refresher is due?

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (8 children)

    I mean it's free if you're under 18, at least in my country. If you decide to get it as an adult, the government has decided that they don't really give a fuck because you probably already have at least one of the HPV strains they're trying to vaccinate for, and it's just not worth it to the taxpayer to vaccinate you anymore.

    The thing about public healthcare is that you try to get maximum benefit for the public, with the resources you have available. Resources are not infinite, so not all treatments or vaccines can be free for everyone. They're still available and generally cheaper than in some place like the US.

    If someone wants to Mangione the social minister of my country, that's not likely to improve the situation, she was a doctor for a decade and a half before getting into politics and was one of the sane voices during the COVID pandemic telling people to try vaccines and social distancing instead of whatever the ivermectin and bleach equivalents were here. She already got death threats for it, even delivered to her home.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago* (1 child)

    If you decide to get it as an adult ... it's just not worth it to the taxpayer to vaccinate you anymore.

    nah this pitting of the individual against the collective has got to stop. The person that needs the vaccine deserves treatment, regardless of their ability to pay taxes. It's not "the society" they're taking away from, they're a part of society. It's society taking care of itself.

    Also who "decides" to get HPV?? Framing illness as a personal failing is really awful

    The thing about public healthcare is that you try to get maximum benefit for the public, with the resources you have available.

    I do not believe that in any country using €'s that the issue is resource scarcity.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    nah this pitting of the individual against the collective has got to stop. The person that needs the vaccine deserves treatment, regardless of their ability to pay taxes.

    Huh? Any person who has to pay for the vaccine here DOES pay taxes. The people getting the vaccine for free do not. You have to be under 18 to get it for free.

    It’s not “the society” they’re taking away from, they’re a part of society.

    And the health board has decided that vaccinating an adult for HPV doesn't have the same net benefit to society as vaccinating a young person, so it's more efficient to spend the money elsewhere.

    Also who “decides” to get HPV?? Framing illness as a personal failing is really awful

    Who said anything about anyone deciding to get HPV?

    I do not believe that in any country using €'s that the issue is resource scarcity.

    Some countries try not to borrow their budget into oblivion and thus not everything gets treated or vaccinated for free, free university education has limits per subject per year, etc.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (5 children)

    Resources are not infinite

    Yes they are. The government can print money for a healthcare system just as easily as it does for banks.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (4 children)

    You're American, aren't you?

    My government can't just print more money, it can sell bonds. It then has to pay interest on those AND pay back the principal too. Most of the government's money comes from taxes.

    The EU can print more money, but we are not in control of that.

    We also don't manufacture vaccines and medicine, we have to buy them from other countries. So they don't exactly appear out of thin air either.

    But I guess if you're American, it's easy to see resources as unlimited because your country's been plundering the rest of the world.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (1 child)

    No I'm not, I'm german. Which is the same diff in the context of the EU I get that. But I'd still maintain that the issue is likely the coddling of rich people and letting them spend the countries resources and laborpower how they wish instead of an actual shortage of vaccines.

    Or tell me that it's all germany's fault, that's usually true as well.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago*
    1. Countries using the € can't actually print money, only the European Central Bank can. So for any individual country, MMT doesn't apply, it's still mainstream economics as per the table in the article you linked. When we have a budget shortfall in Estonia, we sell bonds, cut costs or raise taxes. And our taxes are pretty fucking high already.

    2. If you're a smaller nation with its own currency, i.e not the US or China and not part of the EU bloc, printing more currency just means it's worth less in other currencies and since you have to buy things (such as, again, vaccines and medicine) from other countries, you end up losing in purchasing power and you'll still have to decide what to buy and what not to buy. This is the "MMT in practice" section in your article where it mentions high inflation for pretty much all the countries that tried it, which are basically all latam countries. For SOME reason, no developed countries outside of the US do this at any scale, perhaps because nobody else's currency can take infinite printing without being devalued to fuck all.

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  • [–] 41 points 5 months ago

    Probably just saw the € as a weird cent symbol

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  • [–] 17 points 5 months ago

    Gay for not pay

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  • [–] 26 points 5 months ago (7 children)

    This is funny but I want to remind people not to discuss the STI diagnosis of your brother’s girlfriend. On twitter.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    Almost everyone has HPV and for most people (especially cis men) its harmless. But if you are young, please get the shot to protect the uteruses in your life.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (1 child)

    They only vaccinate 9-18 year olds here now, with main focus being <14 I believe (of both genders). I could get a shot myself, but it's like 200€. And I'm not that young anymore, I probably have some form of HPV, though I could also check to see if my recent test included it.

    I swear they used to vaccinate men under 26 or 27 and all women at some point. I think I was a year above the limit back then, but I could be wrong

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  • [–] 9 points 5 months ago

    What an amazing comment chain lol

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Bullshit. One dose costs €165 and you need 2 to 3 shots.

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  • ~€90? Damn, I paid €600 for mine and I'm an at risk group.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    This is funny because as a teenager the main argument for why I (amab) was allowed to get the hpv vaccine was to prevent risk to any potential afab partners. These days we know that hpv causes all sorts of cancers in anyone with any functional anatomy (if someone has neither a throat nor genitals I'm very sorry for their situation, but they're an extreme outlier).

    The ubiquity of HPV reminds me of the ubiquity of chickenpox. Neither was immediately fatal and most people got them so a lot of people didn't get that these were very bad diseases that needed to be actively controlled. I stand by my disgust at the parents who refused their daughters the hpv vaccine on the grounds of sexual purity. I don't have kids, but I can't imagine not giving my child a vaccine that can prevent cancer, no matter how much I disapprove of the actions they'd have to take for them to get that kind of cancer.

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