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241 points anigbrowl | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.337s | source
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Herring ◴[] No.44611149[source]
Step 1: Point at immigrants/trans/blacks/etc

Step 2: Cut taxes on the rich. <---------- You are here

It works every time. Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson said: “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”

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yakz ◴[] No.44611187[source]
Let’s see how the rural poor feel when their hospital closes, they can’t get medicaid, health insurance is wildly out of reach, they have no ability to borrow money thanks to insane medical debt that they can never repay, and their wages are garnished for student debt from a degree they never finished. How long until debt becomes a crime?

We’re gonna recreate serfdom in the USA.

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1. tzs ◴[] No.44611290[source]
> Let’s see how the rural poor feel when their hospital closes, they can’t get medicaid [...]

There's been research on that [1]. They become even more likely to vote Republican. Here's the abstract:

> Who do citizens hold responsible for outcomes and experiences? Hundreds of rural hospitals have closed or significantly reduced their capacity since just 2010, leaving much of the rural U.S. without access to emergency health care. I use data on rural hospital closures from 2008 to 2020 to explore where and why hospital closures occurred as well as who–if anyone–rural voters held responsible for local closures. Despite closures being over twice as likely to occur in the Republican-controlled states that did not expand Medicaid, closures were associated with reduced support for federal Democrats and the Affordable Care Act following local closures. I show that rural voters who lost hospitals were roughly 5–10 percentage points more likely to vote Republican in subsequent presidential elections. If anything state Republicans seemed to benefit in rural areas from rejecting Medicaid and resulting rural health woes following the passage of the ACA. These results have important implications for population health and political accountability in the U.S.

[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-024-10000-8