Funny Events of the "Woke" world

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
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That's a surprisingly low number. Americans spend something like double that on food, so my comment actually works over here.
Right... but the USA also spends vastly more on healthcare.

I found some figures for the USA.

Apparently the total amount spent on food & drink in the USA was ~$1.8 trillion (2019). However, its healthcare expenditure was $3.8 trillion (2019). So in fact it's even less true of the USA than the UK: the average American spends around twice as much on healthcare as on food.

I mean, we do have better food than the UK. I don't think that's capitalism, though, I think just about everywhere on earth has that.
Questionable.

The USA, as a major cultural melting pot, has a lot of influences bringing in different ideas that have contributing to lots of interesting styles of food - "cuisine": but lots of the raw materials can be low quality. The UK had poor cuisine, but the food quality could often be quite high (although rationing during the world wars severely damaged that too as people got used to using low quality and processed foods). Unsophisticated cuisine can still be very effective as long the food quality is good: a typical British roast dinner thrives or dies on food and cooking quality.

Since the 80s the British kind of woke up to their terrible food and had a huge explosion in cuisine (much due to immigrants with better stuff) which means it is very easy to get hold of good food across much of the UK these days: hardly anyone eats traditional British cuisine regularly. Some restaurants describe their cuisine as "Modern British", which is sort of traditional British basic concepts but heavily re-invented with other techniques and styles, usually Continental European.

Thus we might very much argue that (traditional) British cuisine tends to be very poor, but in fact "food" generally in Britain these days is decent-good.
 

tstorm823

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Right... but the USA also spends vastly more on healthcare.

I found some figures for the USA.

Apparently the total amount spent on food & drink in the USA was ~$1.8 trillion (2019). However, its healthcare expenditure was $3.8 trillion (2019). So in fact it's even less true of the USA than the UK: the average American spends around twice as much on healthcare as on food.
I'm sure you know as well as I do that a large portion of the "healthcare expenditure" is companies and the government passing each other big fat checks without accomplishing anything.

How about we go with a source that has a more direct comparison:
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You definitely know as well as I do that I will defend my flippant comments into the ground.
 

Hawki

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The UK had poor cuisine, but the food quality could often be quite high (although rationing during the world wars severely damaged that too as people got used to using low quality and processed foods).
Wouldn't rationing be a thing for pretty much every European country though? Rationing didn't ruin French or Italian cusine for instance.
 

Gordon_4

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Wouldn't rationing be a thing for pretty much every European country though? Rationing didn't ruin French or Italian cusine for instance.
I think the implicit statement is that England has never had a strong culinary tradition. Not like what exists in France or Italy at any rate.
 

Terminal Blue

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Wouldn't rationing be a thing for pretty much every European country though? Rationing didn't ruin French or Italian cusine for instance.
I mean, in the case of France (urban France, at least) rationing was essentially a starvation diet, and that's if you could even find food at all amidst the massive shortages. The Italian experience was less extreme, but still very bad for a lot of people.

You don't get things like rationing cookbooks in France because rationing wasn't a thing you learned to endure. In Britain, it was, and hence we ended up with a postwar culture still obsessed with frugality when it came to food. My parents still had those old, wartime rationing cookbooks when they went to university in the 1970s. They were born a decade after the war, and they still grew up with an ethos of literally eating garbage if it meant saving money. I think that's a pretty uniquely British thing.
 

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
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I'm sure you know as well as I do that a large portion of the "healthcare expenditure" is companies and the government passing each other big fat checks without accomplishing anything.
But so what? It's healthcare expenditure. If it's pissing away substantial quantities money for corporate profits, that's part of your nation's healthcare expenditure.

How about we go with a source that has a more direct comparison:
I'm pretty sure that's looking at direct, out-of-pocket healthcare spending. But I think that's an extremely misleading way to look at health expenditure.
 

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
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Wouldn't rationing be a thing for pretty much every European country though? Rationing didn't ruin French or Italian cusine for instance.
As Terminal Blue explained above.

WW2 heavily converted the British to stuff like egg and milk powder, processed meats like spam, etc. - and for nearly 15 years, because rationing only ended in the mid-1950s. That brought a lot of people up with some less-than-distinguished culinary skills and practices. Part of the impact is also that the UK has far less agricultural land than most European countries relative to population, and back in those days a lot of non-processed foodstuffs were harder to transport and remain fresh.
 
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tstorm823

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But so what? It's healthcare expenditure. If it's pissing away substantial quantities money for corporate profits, that's part of your nation's healthcare expenditure.
But not part of what any individual is spending.
I'm pretty sure that's looking at direct, out-of-pocket healthcare spending. But I think that's an extremely misleading way to look at health expenditure.
It's not. That includes health insurance.
 

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
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It's not. That includes health insurance.
If you're buying insurance personally, it's coming out of your pocket.

However, people getting insurance through a scheme such as an employer insurance package is de facto paying for health insurance. Technically they are not in that they are not the ones handing over the money. But that healthcare package is something they receive in lieu of salary (which would otherwise be necessary to maintain an equivalent "reward" for labour).
 

Gergar12

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The number one way to counter Republicans is to repeal the 22nd amendment. They will never win the presidency ever again if they had to run against a really successful social democrat like FDR for example.
 

Hawki

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You heard it here first folks, capitalization is oppressive.

Or I dunno, maybe someone mixed up anti-capitalism with anti-capitalization. 0_0

I guess it gives new meaning to de-colonization. I can only hope that semi-colons are spared the process.
 
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Kwak

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You heard it here first folks, capitalization is oppressive.

Or I dunno, maybe someone mixed up anti-capitalism with anti-capitalization. 0_0

I guess it gives new meaning to de-colonization. I can only hope that semi-colons are spared the process.
How does something like that even get on your radar? You a frequent peruser of Mount Royal University press releases?
 

Hawki

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How does something like that even get on your radar? You a frequent peruser of Mount Royal University press releases?
No. Just popped up randomly on Twitter.

Got plenty of time these days to just browse, to find stuff that makes me laugh, cry, or both. :(
 

Trunkage

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You heard it here first folks, capitalization is oppressive.

Or I dunno, maybe someone mixed up anti-capitalism with anti-capitalization. 0_0

I guess it gives new meaning to de-colonization. I can only hope that semi-colons are spared the process.
Man, I thought you wrote capitalism.

This is a leap in logic I can't follow
 
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Gordon_4

The Big Engine
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You heard it here first folks, capitalization is oppressive.

Or I dunno, maybe someone mixed up anti-capitalism with anti-capitalization. 0_0

I guess it gives new meaning to de-colonization. I can only hope that semi-colons are spared the process.
Go home Canada, you’re drunk.
 
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Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
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Got plenty of time these days to just browse, to find stuff that makes me laugh, cry, or both. :(
That's one of the best things about computer games: gives you something to do instead of sift through the cesspit that is social media.
 

Dwarvenhobble

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Today in woke world, Wi Spa did happen and a person has now been charged


The LA police department (LAPD) announced late on Thursday that it had put out an arrest warrant for Darren Merager
According to the gossip news site Meaww Darren Merager is already on the sex offenders register and has two prior convictions for indecent exposure.


The thing that people were saying would never happen has seemingly just happened