• CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 months ago

    The main reason why it exists is to provide jobs. The number of people who work at the TSA at every airport in every state…no representative wants to cut those jobs.

    • AltheaHunter@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      3 months ago

      I fucking hate that this is a thing. “We can’t stop doing this useless and/or detrimental thing, look at all the work it makes for other people to do!!!” Absolutely bonkers that it’s just a standard political argument.

      • not_woody_shaw@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Same thing with medical insurance. It shouldn’t exist but it pays a lot of people’s salaries.

        • AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          The worst part is if people only worked two or three days a week corporations would still be profitable and everyone would have a job.

          • smb@lemmy.ml
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            3 months ago

            i once heared something like this:

            “the idea of having more than those who have nothing is the very only reason shareholders can ever imagine someone would work for at all, thus they also falsely believe they would do something good when enforcing this by removing everything from those who already are vulnerable and thus create a living example of how you would end when you don’t help them rob even more.”

          • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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            3 months ago

            lol you don’t think a government’s single-payer office is going to be tasked with trying to deny people care?

            If so, why not? Why wouldn’t those government people’s orders be “Make sure people don’t use too much medical resources”

        • vonxylofon@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          It shouldn’t exist? I’d like to see you pay for your medical expenses out of pocket.

          P. S. No, I am not American.

          • Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            3 months ago

            Here in the states when we say “medical insurance shouldn’t exist” what we mean is “the medical insurance industry shouldn’t exist”

            Basically the cluster fuck of insurance companies we have now shouldn’t exist, we should just have a single payer type system where medical expenses are paid for through our tax dollars. In its current state it’s a nightmare to deal with.

          • JovialMicrobial@lemm.ee
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            3 months ago

            A lot of private insurance in the US amounts to paying a couple hundred monthly to have the insurance and then they deny payment for basically anything and everything. So you pay them to pay out of pocket anyway.

            Just got state insurance which covers everything, but very few offices accept it.

            So yeah. Insurance in the US is super fucked up and people go without healthcare, even if they have insurance because they simply can’t afford it.

          • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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            3 months ago

            I do pay for my medical expenses out of pocket, because I can’t keep insurance long enough to ensure consistent cate.

            I’ll give an example. Back in 21 I signed up for medicaid because I was poor enough to qualify. I get an email from my psychiatrist’s office “We can no longer treat you at this office because of your new medicaid status. We are not allowed to treat people on medicaid.” I asked, and they’re not even allowed to treat me if I pay out of pocket.

            This is a new medicaid rule. Now if you’re on medicaid you can only see medicaid-approved providers.

            So I canceled my medicaid. And I continue to pay out of pocket.

            I’ve tried using other government-assisted programs before, with disastrous results. I’ve been kicked off the rolls before, at random, and I’ve had to go through the crash involved in stopping my medication, because while these government programs are helpful, they’re also buggy as fuck and can’t be relied upon.

            • vonxylofon@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              That’s why you want a national health care program funded by taxes (they call it health insurance, but it’s mandatory and based on income, so it’s a tax, really). Private insurance is still allowed, but everyone gets a baseline.

              Sure, this system has got its share of problems, and they’re massive, but if you need care, you generally receive it regardless of your financial situation. Again, bureaucracy happens and there are waiting times etc. etc., but the idea that you may lose everything because you got sick is so alien to me I have no words.

          • not_woody_shaw@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Yeah I guess the kind of Single Payer model I prefer can be conceptualised as “insurance.” But it feels more like health care is taxpayer funded. The similarity to insurance is just details for the detail nerds.

      • BurningRiver@beehaw.org
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        3 months ago

        “The government made 25% of my district unemployed, why didn’t I get reelected?”

        Ask it from that side and you have your answer.

          • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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            3 months ago

            I agree with you 99%, and I’m only saying this incidentally: I think the world makes a lot more sense when we realize that change as such has real, ethically-valid costs associated with it.

            We do want change, but change is a source of stress for a nervous system, so it’s always worth remembering that there’s a certain maximum rate of change we can follow while keeping people sane.

            This was a key recognition, for instance, in finally succeeding at fixing various addictions of mine. I just slowed down the rate of the change and stopped trying to change overnight. And I’m not referring to dangerous withdrawal here. I’m talking about managing my own anxiety during the change to trigger snap-back.

            I agree TSA’s gotta change, and stop doing their super invasive checks at the airports. But I just wanted to point out at a more global level there should be a little respect for such things as “We can’t just drop this all at once because we’ve been doing it for 25 years”.

    • Bumblefumble@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      I mean if a state removed the TSA and spent the money on something else, surely they could use the money to create as many jobs as they removed but in an actual useful field.

          • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but I wouldn’t vote for a republican who got me a job, and I probably wouldn’t vote for anyone who got rid of my job (unless they were otherwise really great). So at least for me, getting rid of the job means you lose my vote and replacing it doesn’t necessarily gain my vote.

          • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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            3 months ago

            And people watching this exchange from the outside might vote against because they don’t like the idea of “minus a job for Bob, plus a job for Carl” as even-steven.

      • nehal3m@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        No, it’d be more useful just on account of the harm they are not doing. I don’t give a rat’s ass what they do instead, hell, do a huge UBI experiment and just let them chill. Might as well.

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      If it’s just for the jobs we can put them to work doing something useful like carrying bags for old people in the airport. Literally anything would be more useful.