Young men are 'playing videogames all day' instead of getting jobs because they can mooch off of free healthcare, claims congressman
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/young-men-are-playing-videogames-all-day-instead-of-getting-jobs-because-they-can-mooch-off-of-free-healthcare-claims-congressman/Open linkView original on lemmy.ca468
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People are checking out because the middle class is non-existent. It doesn’t matter how hard you work - the the prospect of getting ahead, owning a home, retirement is out of reach for the vast majority of people.
People can work hard and stress themselves out or they can check out of the system and achieve largely the same result.
This is about the failures of late stage capitalism. To claim the issue is free healthcare is gaslighting.
"Middle class" contrasts with "upper class" and "lower class", not with "ruling class" and "working class"; it's the wrong perspective.
It may be today, but a strong middle class is what placates the working class. Give em something to shoot for so they won't shoot you.
"Middle class" IS working class. It's a false distinction that only serves to undermine our only tool against the ruling class, class solidarity. (I think we're kind of saying the same thing.)
Gaslight
Obstruct
Project
Time for another round of:
“Turn on, tune in, drop out.”
Waaaay ahead of ya haha
FTFY
Is this free healthcare you speak of in the room with us right now?
Is he mad that young adults can stay on their parents' health plan until age 26?
Which the parents pay for.... They just don't know what words mean anymore.
Look up the book "Hell's Angel's" by Hunter Thompson.
There's a section in the book where he writes about the economics of being a hippie/biker/artist circa 1970.
A biker could work for six months as a Union stevedore and save up enough money to go on the road for two years. A part time waitress could support herself and her musician boyfreind.
That's what these guys grew up seeing and reading, huh? So they're trying to govern with assumptions that have not held true for decades.
No they are not governing. They are attempting to rule using rhetoric they know sticks with older generations. That's it. Just gotta keep people voting and they will say and do anything to get those votes.
Nah, young folk these days just don't want to work. They need to buckle down, pull on the ol' bootstraps, and work a part time job at the factory while going to college. No reason that shouldn't support a family of 4 with a single income!
Sounds awesome! Reminds me of a Chinese Buddhist couple who work a few months then travel a few months to temples
I would take anything Hunter S. Thompson wrote with a massive grain of salt. He’s fun to read but gonzo journalism isn’t a great source for facts.
First, he wrote the book in the 1970s. People would have noticed if he was wildly off base.
Second, you can do a quick search and prove his numbers were correct.
Meanwhile: Politicians who never had a day of honest work their entire life.
Where are they getting free healthcare from? I'd like it. Oh does Canada have this problem? No? Huh
We still have widespread disengagement in Canada too because the problem isn’t the healthcare.
The problem is wage suppression and corporate greed.
And rich people don’t have jobs because they mooch off poor people.
Hypocrisy at its finest.
Where are they getting the money for the games? Those are expensive as shit, I’m still making do with games I bought decades ago because I can’t afford new ones.
How are they eating? Food is fucking expensive, are they getting free food as well?
How are they paying rent? Have to have a roof over your head and electricity in your walls to play video games all day.
This mother fucker thinks all guys are like his son, lazy mother fuckers mooching off their parents. What a dumb, ignorant moron.
I think he might be speaking about 16 year old boys. He seems mad that they're children instead of working father's.
does he think everyone in the US gets the same healthcare that congresspeople get?
Probably.
Free Healthcare ? In Amerikkka ?
Since when ?
Only when you're so poor (earn less than 15k/yr out 21k a year in some states) not having it functionally costs more money, but only so long as you follow all the bureaucratic rules to continually prove eligibility.
And don't forget, you still have to find healthcare providers that accept Medicaid, pay copays, etc.
In some states they don't even have that. I've been seeking disability for six years in America for a partially broken back, with ten years of documented ongoing treatment at this point from childhood and my parent's medical coverage (I can walk, but I'm stooped most of the time and get to live with chronic pain, yippee) and because I couldn't get by on nothing, and got a part time gig that didn't cross the threshold I still got my benefits denied. So like, in all technicality, though I see myself as an able-bodied young man and pursue an active lifestyle to make sure my weight doesn't cause my spine to degrade and leave me fully paralyzed, I'm not even who this guy's talking about, and I can't get benefits through the current system. Now I'm just uninsured and planning to immigrate for education (and healthcare).
Until you're 26 off your parents
Where can I get this free healtcare that pays your rent?
By getting elected to Senate or Congress
So us person here. This free healthcare he speaks of is news to me.
He gets free govt Healthcare and probably stays at home playing video games. It's all projection.
With fascists every accusation is an admission
This is rich coming from someone that has literally never worked a days labor in their lives.
Young men as a cohort have a 90% employment rate.
Theres nowhere in the country that has legitimate free healthcare, and only a small handful of states that have healthcare for those below the poverty line.
Where are these supposed young people just living it up off free healthcare?
How do you not work and still have money for the Xbox subscription and steam sales?
Or food or shelter or anything?
Free healthcare doesn't pay rent or utilities. I would love to stay at home and play video games regardless of my healthcare status, but I simply couldn't afford to.
how do i leech off of free healthcare that sounds really good
Become a congressperson, they get Medicare for life just like every other citizen should have but don't because Congress will grant it to themselves but not everyone else. If it's good enough for them it should be good enough to cover us.
Get elected to the US Congress. They don't do anything and get 6 figure salaries AND free Healthcare!
Yeah how does that work? How do I get my Healthcare to pay my mortgage?
Be disabled, be elderly, be a guy working multiple jobs and still not make enough to be above the poverty line.
The amount of dirty looks I got today casually playing slay the spire on my steam deck as a 41 year old man in the waiting room of a medical facility was pretty impressive.
Cmon they were just jelly u had a deck lol
It's so sweet. I am bad at consoles and haven't owned one since Sonic made his debut but this thing rocks.
I'd give you dirty looks as well if you weren't playing on A20 and fighting the heart
They were wondering why you weren't playing Balatro.
Please tell me more about this free healthcare
I'm flabbergasted
Didn't you know sex is bad? It's absolutely reprehensible and the only allowable exception is for the purposes of procreation, where you are allowed only to use the missionary position and your lawfully wedded wife is to be completely obscured by a blanket covering her entire body apart from a small hole in her crotch area. You can not look down or touch her body with your hands at any point, you should be reciting prayer the entire time and preferably keep one hand on the Bible during the whole process.
All other ways to engage with sexual acts and sexuality are unnatural, ungodly and frankly disgusting.
The lord needs to help these people. They're cooked.
Sure. Let's just pretend video games are free. And so is healthcare. Also, how much health care does he think young people use? This is a stupid argument.
Pretty rich coming from a guy who lets trump take every power congress is supposed to hold. WTF does he even do at work? If we stopped paying him, would anything at all happen? Every republican seems like a whiny crybullying grifter to me.
You gotta be fucking kidding me. What sort of disconnected boomer statement is that!?
I hate using such terms as "boomer", but how else am I going to describe this?
I'm in Denmark, and I can just about get by on one job. I have friends from America struggling to make ends meet, and they're working TWO jobs!
So the fuck is this guy talking about!?
I mean Republican assholes is a much better and more accurate adjective.
They're close to saying the quiet part out loud here. The reason (one of them) universal healthcare gets so much pushback is because an employer provided healthcare is a major way to keep the working class in their place.
I know so many people who have stayed in shitty abusive jobs because they can't lose the healthcare. Imagine if people could fuck off and decide to live a less resource intensive life? Would be terrible for the economy.
I'm pissed at the state of
healthcarehealth business in this (u.s.) country, and I think you should be too!Theres people that was scared of losing their jobs that they didnt disobey managment and leave the factory before it was washed away in the helene floods... many died. But dont worry, the family got a $100 walmart giftcard for compensation...
Young men who are capable of playing video games all day are likely depressed, and have a clinical problem. Our volition to be productive was demonstrated during the 2020 lockdown and the great resignation of 2021-22, in which young men (as with all other working demographics) learned:
The ones who resigned from old jobs were the ones who were able to monetize their hobby enough to quit. Many more got productive, but didn't find something in their craft for which there was a ready market.
Speaker Johnson is a fierce MAGA and conforms to the common fascist trope of never speaking in good faith. See Sartre's antisemite quote.
With several perspectives including that crunch remains a thing in AAA game development, our ownership class and CEOs are less concerned about maximizing profits than they are being lords with a feif and peons (compulsory servitude).
Oh and death to all monarchists. Disney deaths preferred.
I would prefer to work a job than to grind in a videogame. Unfortunately, Americans live in a nation where bad working conditions, low pay, heavy competition, instability, and ghost jobs makes job seeking unpalatable.
American capitalism is a cancer.
True. Even the Nordic Model nations are backsliding from what I hear. It is why I think that we need to try an wholly artificial economic system, with rules and principles. Similar to a Constitution's framework, but focused on providing for the wellbeing of all citizens.
Yes socialism will work with another name attached to it.
The only social system that can work is if democracy comes into the workplace, and that is what socialism is. When workers unite and control the means of production, then we will all truly be free. This is what Marx meant by saying: "Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains."
The only problem is the name. Some have called it democracy at work, but I feel that is not snappy enough.
My homebrew is Universal Ranked Income, or URI. There are at least two jokes in that shorthand.
Anyhow, the premise is that everyone gets a Rank 0 income with universal benefits by default. $10k is given to every citizen each year, money being solely used for lifestyle rather than necessity. Higher ranks replace the income of lower ones. Schooling is a job with an income based on grades, $12k-$20k range of income. Rank 2 is jobs like being a waitress or clerk, giving $40k. Astronauts fall into the highest category of R5, thus they get $100k. All jobs are ranked according to objective Effort, Risk, and Knowledge metrics. Employers can't pay more or less than the income rank, nor offer benefits to select employees.
Essentially, there are absolute floors and ceilings on income and wealth. Everyone also gets issued standard items like food, clothing, cars, and so forth, but these are very generic - you spend money to get clothes with interesting patterns, varied food, bigger cars, larger shelter, and so forth. Capitalism is reserved for things that need to be attractive, while socialism is used to ensure survival and wellbeing.
He has free healthcare. That's all he cares about.
And if he is projecting like everything else in his life he is playing candy crush in his office right now.
Music is making younger generations lazy.
Nono, it's books.
Nono, it's film.
Nono, it's TV.
Nono, it's music again, but only certain kinds of music like rock and metal.
Nono, it's video games.
And we've made their environment worst than ours and it's their fault.
Fucking youngsters
Those inane Shakespeare plays are making the world a dumber place!
Putting aside the, "Everyone but an idiot knows the poor must be kept poor, or they will never be productive" logic, it's also just dumb as shit to claim that "able-bodied young men" are going to be super motivated to get off the couch for the sake of health insurance - not even real healthcare, we're talking about paying hundreds of dollars a month so that if you get sick you can "only" be saddled with a very high deductible.
I fucking hate these people's guts. Something something Luigi's Mansion.
'Get fucked poors, sucks to suck when working full time still keeps you below the poverty line. Can't afford to pay for you lazy fucks to see a doctor when we've got rich people who need the money more'
Lyin’ Mike at it again
People turning to escapism because the world is shit?
FUCK THAT LET’S MAKE IT WORSE THEN.
He knows this is false. It's bait, that even i see this time. There really is nothing to see here
My brother I am going to find every outlet of escapism possible to cope with the reality that your generation had a massive part in creating. Sorry 💅
No job, grind away the entire waking day with a low paying zero hours contract while filing job applications, No videogames, no relaxation, more stress, costs healthcare providers more
No job, spend some of the day working while filing job applications, Yes Videogames, relaxation, lower stress, costs healthcare providers less
Yet another case where if the politician seriously thought about the issue for just half a minute they'd realise their attitude makes no sense.
Imagine living in a country that has turn to shit so long ago that you can't believe that it is possible for people can be motivated to work without resorting to the constant threat of being left to die if they don't.
Hey look, an "elite" with absolutely no concept of how actual reality works, who's just trying to stir up a base consisting of people with IQs smaller than their shoe size.
I promise you, if I could stay home all day and play video games by somehow using free healthcare, I'd be doing it.
Dunno if it is satire, i honestly am struggling to tell these days, but there's a post that says this fucker routinely plays surgeon simulator while attending meetings....on twitch
this dude and his son monitor each other's devices to make sure they don't consume porn. i don't think he should be allowed to talk about literally anyone else's habits.
anyone that obsessive is addicted and has at a minimum one burner porn tablet lmfao
"I want to check that old building for treasure!" vs. "I want to check my son's porn usage".
Adding my health Card number to my steam account payment method.
If you choose to pay this way, you will no longer be given upfront prices on the steam store and several months or years later you will receive a bill from a debt collector to finally pay for your game. And it's going to be a lot more than you thought.
Lol, sorry i forgot to put /s at the end ..
Says republican who has access to healthcare.
Why is this specific to men? Are women not able to take advantage of these same programs? Are men having job placement issues where women are not?
What is the root cause of this? Since jobs and people have both existed for a looooooong time, I doubt this latest generation was just born lazy. What's the behind the scenes info here?
the behind the scenes is that they made it the fuck up. Men 25-84 have about a 90% participation rate in the workforce.
The only places where men are at low participation in the workforce is 16-19. He wants more children working.
Ah, then the “free” healthcare is the healthcare they get because their parents pay for it. Covering kids is far from free. But it taps in to any rage parents may feel having to cover their kids even if they always argue with their kids. A lie that his base is happy to hear.
Yes, working instead of going to college.
He believes any woman not currently pregnant is an abomination unto nuggan
Decades pass, yet politicians keep using the same bullshit claims, just the sauce is slightly different.
Fuck Cheeto and the USA
Since I am not from the us or ever been there, I do have a question: are there people that truly believe in this bullshit?
Yes, but they get there "backwards".
It's not like they believe healthcare is inherently demotivating, it's that they're already Red Team members, and "Healthcare and welfare breed moochers" is a Red Team belief, and since they're good Red Team members, they synthesize it into their belief system--despite the fact functionally no one rips off the healthcare system because, frankly, you have to have some kind of pathology to visit a doctor enough for fraud to be an issue.
I mean "Oh noes, they're ripping off the healthcare systems by.. (checks notes) ..getting antibiotics for their earache!!" is not a thing. Ever.
Everyone, even in countries with socialized medicine, avoids interactions with the healthcare system until they need to. I mean, do you you really want to recreationally get your throat swabbed? I'm sure there's four people on this planet of nine billion who get off on that, but that's it.
Now, rich people, they come to this believe authentically. They hate public healthcare because a) they have to pay for it, and b) it's one less piece of leverage they have to keep people shackled to work. But make no mistake, they also suffer from the delusion, above.
The answer is about half of them do and the other half don't and are there to fleece the first half. You see the same pattern with priests, where some of them are true believers and the rest are just there to devour the flock.
In a crowd of 200 people, you are nearly guaranteed to have a sociopath without any kind of conscience. These people are more or less like sharks and move around and devour those around them without a second thought. It's a shame, because they are often the limiting factor to scaling any kind of human organization.
So many of the rules and restrictions we have today are due to these people, and sadly, it's just part of the human condition.
Who eats healthcare?
I go to the hospital to pick up my free aborted babies to turn into California cheeseburgers.
Somehow, your statement is better than trump being president.
"We need people to have the threat of death to work" isn't the offer you think it is you fuck.
When pasty rich worms like this spout this kind of exploiter class drivel it makes me want to punch them in the throat.
This man literally needs his son the keep his porn habits in check, and he's whining about people playing video games...
What nonsense. I would expect nothing less from a MAGAt.
We should take away their free healthcare
Everyone else has already pointed out the obvious point that free healthcare does not exist here, but you've at least gotta give it to him that this is a reasonable conclusion to draw given that "able-bodied young men" would surely be the least likely among us to get by without access to healthcare.
What country is he talking about? Cuz it sure as shit ain't this one
I dunno. I'd be a lot more apt to go seek a job if the market for my desired career and skills wasn't currently being recklessly trashed. No point in taking a job offer knowing I'll be the new guy and the first to get let go when the inevitable cuts come due to government cutbacks, tariff damage, and a recession leading to more reductions. It's way easier to stay home and let the government, who carelessly took away my job, pay for me to play video games all day.
Shits all fucked up my guy
Congressman can't be fired for doing a poor job?
Nah, it’s because I don’t want to be around cunts like the congressman.
Lots of my friends play games everyday, and all day if they can sometimes. They are also hard workers. It's how we unwind.
Hey Johnson... care to let people in on your little secret? As in... little... secret.
Just a normal US politician. They lost all connection to reality ages ago. Take his ID papers away and let him survive on minimum wage jobs somewhere where nobody knows his sorry face.
It must be really nice to live in a world where your own idiotic opinions don't lead to any meaningful consequences for yourself.
Oh sweet i didn't realize my healthcare covered video games
Actually I am playing videogames all day at work, thank you. NHS provides free corridors to die in if I need healthcare.
What???
What free healthcare? And even if they have that, that doesn't pay for food, shelter, etc...
Those neoliberals are getting cocky.
The joke that keeps on giving
I worked my ass off for ten years and had shit healthcare and i lived hand-to-mouth. Never got ahead. Now that I'm unemployed I get the best healthcare I've ever had for free. I can be broke while working my ass off, or I can be broke and get benefits. Its a no brainer.
I mean, isn't that kinda true? I have Medicare disability and Medicaid. I don't need to work for it. In fact, I need to not work to get it. I also get disability, so motivation for work is low.
If you're a member of this society and disabled, society should take care of you, otherwise it's a shite society.
The problem is our society is hostile towards the concept of... Society.
We've been poisoned to believe individualism is strength when it is weakness. We've been propagandized to resent Americans when they fall on hard times, angry when they draw on herp derp muh tax dollars so as not to die when they lose a job or get an illness.
The US has a profound, deep rooted culture problem. We're more a gaggle of wannabe rugged individuals undermining one another for oligarch crumbs than a society. That's why I want this place to collapse, as both parties want that hyperindivualism poison to keep running us, because only under that die alone, sink or swim, winners and losers race to the bottom national ethos can the owners continue to exploit us to death for ever moar profit that's still never enough.
It's brought nothing but misery, it's destroyed the social contract, and it's destroying the planet. If we do not end our worship of the individual and the pursuit of avarice, it will end us.
I don't know... I think it's the phrase "government teet" that I don't like. I don't ever want to be portrayed as suckling at the government's teet. But yeah, I mean, they hardly give me anything anyways.
That phrase is again just the perverse villainization of the social contract and being a society, and it ultimately only benefits those that want to extract wealth from societies instead of being a member of one.
I'm sorry that it sounds like you've internalized that capitalist aggression meant to keep our citizenry undermining one another instead of lifting one another up. If you're disabled, your society should be judged for failing to give you adequate aid.
I mean maybe you do, but not being able to afford healthcare doesn't automatically mean you're just choosing to play video games all day. I know a guy who's in his second year of med school, does community health volunteering in his free time, and is on Medicaid with the intention of helping others on Medicaid when he finishes.
There's tons of children dependent on Medicaid, pregnant women, people with disabilities, people who work full time but still fall below the poverty line. There are so many different people that depend on Medicaid for different reasons. That's why cutting it to give wealthy people a tax cut is a disgusting thing to do.