The Pitchforks Are Coming for Us Plutocrats (2014)

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014/

by ryandrake • 2 years ago

108 70 2 years ago

cocacola1• 2 years ago

The well of sympathy is running dry for a lot people. I don't think people are going to take up arms in great numbers – or at all, perhaps – but, like Clarence Darrow, they might "read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.”

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/unitedhealthcare-ceo...

“I don’t believe there’s any justification for murder,” she says. “I think it sets a terrible precedent, and logically I know that a society that functions this way is doomed to collapse. Yet I still couldn’t temper my emotional reaction. I did feel a little bit of satisfaction.”

ryandvm• 2 years ago

A lot of people have come to the CEO's defense saying don't blame the players, that they're just working with the incentives of the system. But I think what gets missed by that objection is it is a system that they actively created and sustain.

According to OpenSecrets, UnitedHealth Group has spent $5,860,000 lobbying in 2024.

So yeah, fuck that guy.

int_19h• 2 years ago

I mean, it's not like this guy was forced to be a CEO in that system. There's no shortage of work.

shiroiushi2• 2 years ago

[flagged]

freeone30002• 2 years ago

His company was not an outlier; you have similar stories from Signa, AIG, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. BCBS had unveiled new rules to stop covering anathesia during surgery after the scheduled end time, regardless of if the surgery was still in progress. Those were rolled back after the killing.

American healthcare is like this. Your doctor wants to give you some treatment, some other person decides how much it costs, then insurance, who you paid ahead of time, who you are legally required to have, who has never and will never see you, decides that it’s too expensive to pay out. Even though that’s what insurance is for. They get rich off of this; you suffer.

SoftTalker2• 2 years ago

The thing we pay for called "health insurance" is really not insurance. Real insurance covers catastrophic unpredictable losses up to a pre-defined limit. That's all. What we have is some sort of forced pre-payment for routine medical care combined with some limited coverage for the unknown.

tdeck4• 2 years ago

BCBS had unveiled new rules to stop covering anathesia during surgery after the scheduled end time, regardless of if the surgery was still in progress. Those were rolled back after the killing.

Sounds like some positive outcomes already.

tptacek9• 2 years ago

There's a long discussion about this on another thread, but if you're complaining about the BCBS anesthesia thing, you should look into how much you actually understand medical billing, because your complaint would also imply you find Medicare unconscionable as well.

rsanek3• 2 years ago

they were an outlier. as has been discussed, they denied claims twice as often as is average https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/12/05/data/unitedhealthcare...

blackeyeblitzar• 2 years ago

These companies also outsource to middlemen companies that do some of the claim denying dirty work for them (see evicore). That’s why they all universally provide a bad service. But I have to say, Aetna is by a long shot worse than others. Look up stories of moms being denied coverage for a routine delivery. Aetna seems to regularly deny first, and then force these exhausted and vulnerable women through long drawn out appeals process. It’s just a way for them to delay payments and change their cash flow. Executives should be in jail.

dang• 2 years ago

You can't post like this here, and we ban accounts that do, so please don't post like this again.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42336090.

Animats3• 2 years ago

A decade later, we have mass support for a president who is a billionaire.

femiagbabiaka• 2 years ago

That will only accentuate the problem. When 20% tariffs land and people can point directly to the rich persons in charge, I wonder what their response will be?

shiroiushi2• 2 years ago

They'll cheer for it and ask for more? That's what we've been seeing with Trump's rallies, and the strong support he got at the polls.

Sure, a few malcontents might get angry and try shooting at someone. It only takes one angry person to pull off a successful assassination, as we just saw in NYC. A couple of other angry people shot at Trump on the campaign trail. But that wasn't related to his popularity, since he won overwhelmingly in the election afterwards.

I suppose the rich people are probably going to need to hire more bodyguards, so this might be a good time to buy stock in a security company.

FranzFerdiNaN2• 2 years ago

They are going to blame Biden or China or the left or the lgbtq community or Obama. Anyone but their own team.

rsanek3• 2 years ago

they didn't seem to mind when Biden kept em

penguin_booze• 2 years ago

president who is a billionaire

And other things. The B part is the least worrying.

Animats3• 2 years ago

The point here is that the article title is "The Pitchforks Are Coming for Us Plutocrats", yet, a decade later, the plutocrats are more in charge than ever. And are popular with the masses.

franceschina3• 2 years ago

not "mass support"... only half of registered voters "chose" Trump... because they just want change, and our system doesnt give us any actual choice

Schnitz• 2 years ago

This time it’s different bro, trust. (:

jongjong• 2 years ago

What we need at this point is Universal Basic Income. If billionaires understood how UBI benefits THEM, for sure we'd already have it.

What billionaires own today is essentially a piece of a giant debt-based economic sugar puff.

UBI is a way to replace the debt vacuum with money. You've got to put cream in that sugar puff so that it holds its shape.

Else the debt in our debt-based system will soon suck all the air out and it will collapse on itself.

Watch "Hidden secrets of money" - There is a segment in there which explains money creation and how there is always more debt in the system than there is money available to repay it.

o11c2• 2 years ago

I have never seen the public respond so unanimously to something. Even for, say, bin Laden's death, there was quite a variety of responses easily found.

And in case anybody thinks of that "Stalin quote", it's actually by Kurt Tucholsky.

hn_throwaway_992• 2 years ago

I agree with this - I don't think I've ever seen something unite both the r/Conservative and r/EatTheRich subreddits so completely.

That said, I did see a comment on a NYTimes article that I thought was apt: it's a bit rich for Americans to now complain about how awful our healthcare system is when we just gave full control of government to the party that has rejected any healthcare reform for decades. I mean, this was the party that vilified false "death panels" in Obamacare, and now people are united in their anger about claim denials?? Obamacare is certainly not perfect (though one reason it was proposed is because Obama didn't think "Medicare for all" would be politically possible), but it's better than what existed before, and I have only seen Republicans try to tear it down consistently since it was passed and I've never heard them put forth any viable alternatives that would actually improve the situation.

throwawayqqq11• 2 years ago

I've never heard them put forth any viable alternatives

The article does the same thing. It describes symptoms but never even comes close to a propper problem descrtiption or a true solution.

My suggestion to you is: Let’s do it all over again. We’ve got to try something
“The Capitalist’s Case for a $15 Minimum Wage.”

No! This is not a solution either.

The solution to inequality is not the capping of the lower bound (though, its a nice gesture) because the lower income already has a hard cap: zero.

The upper bound instead stays uncapped! Wealth or inequality is the relative span between the boundaries and this article proposes something like "why cant you guys down there be a little richer" while inflations contiunes to roll and home ownership continues declines. "But hey, arent you looking forward to get that 25$/h raise, when i tell you its time?" ... "Because, look how much you earn now. We certainly life in a more equal and just society." I dont like this limited way of thinking. Its effectively trickery with numbers.

Many of us think we’re special because “this is America.”

I assume many rich and powerful tell to themselfs stories about societal problems, their solutions and how detached their way of life from them is.

Wealth redistibution has to start at the top and to be fair, there are some rich people advocating for more taxation/regulation, but they are heavily out spent by the other side. The author is definitely on the better side but still short sighted.

fakedang• 2 years ago

The best part? Obamacare drew a ton of inspiration from the Massachusetts healthcare plan that was implemented by Mitt Romney, an effing Republican.

RajT88• 2 years ago

I've never heard them put forth any viable alternatives that would actually improve the situation.

It is because, like other issues, they do not want to solve the problem. But they cannot just come out and say that.

o11c2• 2 years ago

In defense of electing Republicans ... it's not like Democrats do more than talk about fixing problems most of the time. And the last time Republicans had control, it turned out they didn't actually have the internal support to actually try to get rid of Obamacare.

The "both sides" argument isn't entirely true, but it isn't untrue either.

franceschina3• 2 years ago

I think it's important for non-americans to understand "we" didn't really vote them into office. there were two choices put up that most of us didn't want... only about half of eligible voters are even registered to be allowed to vote... and those registered voters "chose" Trump 50.1 to 49.9.

then on Election Day the biggest google search was “is Joe Biden not running for reelection ?”

this is the freedumb that the right-wing thinktanks have been planning for decades

owenversteeg• 2 years ago

To put some numbers on it, the official UnitedHealth post currently stands at 62,000 "haha" reactions out of 67,000 total, or 93% "haha" reactions. Easily the most unanimous Facebook reaction I've ever seen.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/15Lx6E54SM/

roenxi2• 2 years ago

This zeitgeist on the topic is ridiculous; nobody can even detect wealth inequality. And historically people knuckle under when there is a huge status discrepancy between them and someone else. It is insane that with all the problems and successes in the world today people are arguing that the problem is that some people are very well off. It can't possibly be a problem and the people pushing that it is are hurting their and others ability to organise usefully.

If there is a systemic problem, it is almost certainly either living standards in the absolute or the rate of change of living standards. If my living standards are consistently improving I really don't care about anyone else and I suspect more people work that way than admit to it.

wmf2• 2 years ago

If there is a systemic problem, it is almost certainly either living standards in the absolute or the rate of change of living standards.

Duh? 25 year olds today cannot afford the house their parents had at 25.

bastage• 2 years ago

And insanely rich people somehow (not new .. but work with me) having access to control politics (and everyones lives globally) by just "buying in".

roenxi2• 2 years ago

You say "duh", but the article disagrees. It is talking about inequality.

cafard• 2 years ago

Boomer here: at 25, I was living in a group house with three other men. I strongly suspect that men of 25 working at dead-end white collar jobs can still afford to share a group house.

There seems to be a belief among some on HN that the prior generations went from college to law school to partnership track in a white-shoe law firm. Some did, and a knew a couple of them. Most of us didn't.

FranzFerdiNaN2• 2 years ago

in the world today people are arguing that the problem is that some people are very well off.

Of course it is. Look at someone like Musk. Because he is VERY well off hey could literally buy an election, and before that he bought the biggest social media platform and turned it into a right-wing propaganda site.

mcphage• 2 years ago

It can't possibly be a problem

Oh, well then you must be right.

If my living standards are consistently improving I really don't care about anyone else

And if they are not?

stetrain• 2 years ago

The wealth inequality leads to a power inequality in a system where money can influence politics and policy, which is most of them.

This leads to politicians and policies that mostly bend to the wealthy investor class instead of the working class.

The working class feels (correctly) that they aren’t being well represented.

The wealth inequality in isolation may not be a huge problem, but there are many second and third order effects of this. We aren’t just talking about “own a mansion” wealthy, we’re talking about “buy an election” and “prevent reasonable healthcare reform” wealth and power.

franceschina3• 2 years ago

"people are arguing that the problem is that some people are very well off"

most people don't really care that some others are "very well off"... people care that corporations have become a massive part of the citizen's everyday lives and wellbeing, but corporations' only responsibility is to maximize profits for shareholders, and when the food is poison and the healthcare is unusable and there are greedy humans running those companies, THAT is what is pissing people off

rubenvanwyk2• 2 years ago

What is crazy is that in many developing countries in Africa, the minimum wage is $15 PER DAY.

$15 per hour is a competitive rate for the middle class and more than most professional accountants I know.

rsanek3• 2 years ago

you should tell your acquaintances to negotiate with their employer, because they are significantly underpaid. https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/accountant/salary

rubenvanwyk2• 2 years ago

What you referenced seems to be for the US? Like I said, this in Africa.

The Pitchforks Are Coming for Us Plutocrats (2014)

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