The Crowhill Journal

I’ve wondered this for a long time. Are Germany, France, Great Britain, etc., only able to afford national healthcare because we subsidize their defense?

A quick look at a few statistics gives a clear answer. No.

Here’s per capita military spending by country.

Israel, $2,402
United States, $2,224
Singapore, $1,932
Saudi Arabia, $1,805
Kuwait, $1,738
Oman, $1,389
Norway, $1,320
Australia, $1,078
France, $978
Bahrain, $891
South Korea, $842
Brunei, $799
United Kingdom, $751
Denmark, $735
Luxembourg, $710

Germany doesn’t even make the top 15, but if we take France as an example, we spend $1,246 more per capita on defense than they do.

Then what about healthcare? If the theory were true, you would expect France to spend about that much more in per capita health care than we do. But it doesn’t work that way.

See How U.S. Healthcare Spending Per Capita Compares With Other Countries

United States, $10,586
Germany, $5,986
Sweden, $5,447
Canada, $4,974
France, $4,965
Japan, $4,766
U.K., $4,070
Italy, $3,428
Spain, $3,323
South Korea, $3,192
Russia, $1,514
Brazil, $1,282
Turkey, $1,227
South Africa, $1,072
India, $209

(I’m assuming these numbers are valid, that they’re comparing apples to apples, etc.. It’s entirely possible they’re incorrect. Healthcare and defense stats seem to be data that people are willing to misrepresent.)

Given these numbers, we spend more on defense and more on healthcare, which brings me to my second question.

Does the U.S. healthcare system, like the U.S. military, subsidize the rest of the world? IOW, we spend so much on defense that Germany doesn’t have to spend much at all. Is the same true with healthcare? Do we develop the drugs, procedures, equipment, expertise, etc. that the rest of the world relies on, allowing them to spend less?

I would love to hear an honest evaluation of that question.

The problem, roughly stated, has three parts. First, there are a lot of people on the lower end of the IQ scale, and the number of jobs for such people are few, and disappearing fast. Second, as automation increases, the IQ required to be productive will increase, putting more and more people in the “not bright enough to be productive” category. Third, people without meaningful work are miserable and prone to get in trouble.

One alleged solution to this problem is education and training. People who view humanity as a blank slate, or wet clay, which can be fashioned into what society needs, will prefer this solution. Unfortunately, it’s very unlikely to be realistic. Some people are simply born less intelligent, and there’s not much that can be done about that.

Another alleged solution is to redistribute wealth from the productive people and hope the non-productive people find something meaningful to do, like art or something. That idea sounds lovely in some ways, but I don’t think it’s realistic because less intelligent people are not going to be making good art. I have a hard time believing that millions of people are going to be satisfied with hobbies in which they make crappy stuff that nobody wants.

Then there are make-work projects, where we get people to do jobs that we don’t really need. That sounds too much like Sisyphus to me.

I suppose it’s important to mention the Nazi solution, just to be thorough. I.e., kill off the people who are unproductive. I hope nobody believes that, but I would not be surprised if the idea resurfaces as this problem gets worse. (A related idea would be the eugenics solution, where we selectively breed for intelligence.)

A possible short-term solution that I’ve heard would be to cut the number of hours a person is allowed to work every week. That would artificially create more jobs and spread some wealth around, but it would also lower wages, so I don’t know if that helps.

What do you think? Are we simply destined to have a lot of unemployable people, or is there a solution to this?

I’m working on a new piece of fiction, and as I was creating the various characters, I wondered what they were like? Were they young or old? Fat or thin? Attractive or ugly? White or black? Italian, French, German, Mexican, Egyptian …. You get the idea.

Unfortunately, the prospect of writing a black character is fraught with difficulty. The woke world wants to make us afraid of so many things. E.g., If I make all my characters white, the woke will say, “See, you live in a white world and you’re prejudiced against black people.” But if I make a black character, the woke will say, “how dare you write a black character? You don’t know what it’s like to be black.”

Right. Like I know what it’s like to be any of my characters.

I don’t know what it’s like to be fat, for example. I could stand to lose five pounds, but I’ve never been fat. And of course I’ve never been a woman.

I think the only way to make the woke happy is to make all the characters me.

(Don’t worry, I have no interest in making the woke happy, and I hope none of them ever bother to read anything I’ve written.)

P&C drink and comment on Jailbreak’s Big Punisher beer, then discuss a shockingly racist infographic on the distinguishing marks of white culture. It lists a series of characteristics that are allegedly unique to whites — things like objective, rational thinking, belief in cause and effect relationships and the scientific method, working hard, deferred gratification …. It sounds like something written by a bunch of white nationalists, but it actually came from the National Museum of African American History and Culture. It’s amazing it got through review.

Portions of the left have gone so far into insanity that they’re moving things backwards. P&C comment on a hilarious video that makes exactly that point — where a woke person and a white racist agree on a whole series of outrageously racist positions.

“Your racial identity is the most important thing about you.”

“Minorities are a united group that think and act the same.”

“Roll back discrimination laws so we can hire based on race.”

And on it goes.

The woke left has become the very racists they claim to hate.

Right click on this link to download the file.

Trader Joe’s decided not to cower before some woke high school kid who complained that their playful use of “Trader Joe” — translated for different foods as “Trader Giotto’s,” “Trader Ming’s,” and “Trader Jose’s” — was racist.

Let’s hope woke-ism has jumped the shark and we can put all this lunacy behind us.