Take Heart Americans: We May Have the World's Worst Response to the Coronavirus, But We Still Have the World's Strongest Military
by John Lawrence, July 15, 2020
Even though we have reduced spending on public health to near zero, we spend about a trillion dollars per year on our military. Trump's response to the pandemic has been, "Pandemic? What pandemic? Let's not let the pandemic ruin a beautiful economy. Open up the economy. It's mainly people of color, the elderly and meatpackers who are doing the dying. So let it rip. If everybody gets it, and there's a 2% death rate, that's only .02x330 million = 6 million Americans who will die. That still leaves 224 million healthy Americans and a fully open beautiful economy." That is the thinking that is the opposite of the thinking of the health professionals, scientists and people who care about the elderly, people of color and meatpackers. Some might say that it is the thinking of a sociopath, a sociopath that cares more about getting himself reelected than he does about the people of America.
Trump knows that it isn't rich people in his base that are doing the dying. Sure, there are the libertarians, non-mask wearers and COVID partyers in his base who are stupid enough to follow his suggestions, those deserving of Darwin awards. True conservatives don't believe in public health. They only are concerned about private health care for those who can pay for it.That's why Trump has defunded every public health agency in the government he could get his hands on. If there's no profit in it for private enterprise, conservatives are against it. That means the CDC, WHO and Dr. Fauci. In an article, Public Health’s Falling Share of US Health Spending, we find this:
There is no absolute measure of the optimal level of public health spending. However, an Institute of Medicine panel recently concluded that public health agencies are markedly underfunded, and that US health spending is out of balance, with spending for clinical care disproportionately high compared with spending for “population-based activities that more efficiently and effectively improve the nation’s health.
While spending on public health is declining, spending on private health care is increasing. That's because health care insurance and pharmaceutical costs are going through the roof. But you get what you pay for in private health care as opposed to public health which treats everyone more or less equally. That's why Trump and Republicans in general seek to defund governmental public health initiatives and to deregulate private health care corporations. The rich then will always get the best health care because they can afford to pay outrageous prices while the poor will get what they can pay for which is not very much. If they lose their job and their health insurance, they will get nothing.
So in Trump's mind it's not worth ruining his beautiful economy for the sake of a few million people of color, immigrants, people of color, meatpackers and old people who were going to die anyway. He could Make America Great Again without these people who were not in his base without them.
But we can all rejoice in the fact that America's military budget is greater than the combined military budgets of most of the next seven largest military budgets around the world, combined. The U.S. outpaces all other nations in military expenditures. World military spending totaled more than $1.6 trillion in 2015. The U.S. accounted for 37 percent of the total. All this spending hasn't been able to fight off the coronavirus though. While other countries spent their money on public health, the US spent on weapons of destruction. It seems the only thing we've destroyed is our own society. Trump's real slogan should be MAPA - Make America Pitiful Again. That's exactly what he has done.
