Uber Ride

I recently took an uber to meet my brother at a barbecue restaurant on Guadalupe Street. We honestly could have taken the bus, but we were under a time limit before my brother headed over to Dallas for an agriculture competition. So we took a $10 uber isntead.

My boyfriend and and I engaged the driver in a conversation concerning politics when we overheard the radio's broadcast on Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The man immediately began rambling about his political views and how he believed Bernie Sanders should run independent. He spoke in conspiracies about Trump getting assassinated if he became president, about Hillary's lack of vote if she wasn't a woman, about the men in Wall Street being the "real people we need to worry about." A lot of it sounded interesting enough to entertain, so I did, but it also sounded incredibly predictable. I felt like I had seen a Refinery29 or Buzzfeed video detailing the exact same predicaments.

I kept the conversation going, but a lot of what I was saying, I wasn't even sure was true. I wasn't even sure if this guy I was talking to knew it was true. I've often times tried to do my own political research, but I find that the articles I attempt to read are completely riddled with words and phrases I can't understand even after I google them. For example, I don't know what it means when a political party "dies". Does it never come back? Is it like Buddhism where it's reincarnated into a weaker version of it's past self? Is that even how Buddhism works? Does Buddhism even need to be capitalized????

I don't really understand what checks and balances do or are or when they were created. I have no clue what a monopoly is or what oligarchy means. There are so many things that I just have no idea about. A part of me feels like I should stay in this blissful ignorance...another part makes me feel guilty for not engaging in politics and really working with my country to better it. And honestly, I can't be the only one that feels like this.

According to this article by Newsweek, "most experts agree that the relative complexity of the U.S. political system makes it hard for Americans to keep up." The article goes on to detail a judge's point of view on the situation, where he explains that our lack of knowledge makes us feel even worse about ourselves not knowing enough, so we give up entirely on doing any research.

The possibility of correcting this issue in modern America seems completely out of date. We have the internet...what else could we possibly need? High school and college students are required to take a government class to graduate, and everyone has a TV to watch the news on. So where is the point that everything just doesn't work? What is it that prevents me from fully understanding federalism and ideology?

I'd like to think I have the golden answer, but I don't. Neither does that Newsweek article. I guess every individual citizen decides what they care about most and what they care about least and all the stuff in the middle kind of blurs.

A Critique on "A Critique on the Social Elite"

I am critiquing Katrina Berthold's blog post "Phase Five: A Critique on the Social Elite", posted on April 1st, 2016 here.

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Although I agree that the healthcare system in the U.S. is skewed, I disagree with comparing America's healthcare to other countries, especially the countries mentioned in this post.

"As many of us already know, Germany, Sweden and Canada all offer free universal healthcare, and are among 11 nations who currently do the same." This is true. However, these countries are incredibly different than the United States. They can afford giving out free universal healthcare, because they don't have that many people that they are giving it out to. Out of these three examples, Germany has the largest population with 80.62 million people.

What is the United States' population?

318.9 million.

That's 318.9 million people that you want to give universal, free healthcare to.

Another country that has universal healthcare is the UK. My boyfriend is a European citizen that lived in England from 2013-14. He got hit in the head by a golf ball (his fault honestly, what's a person doing walking on a golf course?) and got a doctor's appointment about a week later to see if there was anything wrong with him. The doctor told him nothing was wrong and to check a health website if anything came up. The doctors have a set salary and also get paid much, much less than U.S. doctors, who are known to rack in the dough. (UK doctors make between 80-120,000 while U.S. doctors make between 130K-240K)(2)

I do agree, though. Our health system sucks. Having to wait up to eight hours just to get a check up is draining, but universal health care is not the shining answer we sometimes think it could be.

(1) http://www.infoplease.com/world/statistics/most-populous-countries.html

(2) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/9300823/Most-doctors-are-not-paid-six-figure-sums-figures-show.html