SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER

Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.

* indicates required
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
In the United States, Real Flying Cars a Thing But 'Very Serious People' Still Say Medicare for All 'Too Expensive'

The flying "Kitty Hawk" is basically an all-electric drone that can carry one passenger who controls the craft. Nobody knows exactly when it will go on sale. (Photo: Media Kit/Kitty Hawk Flyer)

In the United States, Real Flying Cars a Thing But 'Very Serious People' Still Say Medicare for All 'Too Expensive'

There's a real disconnect when cars start flying and wars never end, but the rent for public housing is about to go up by 20 percent and universal healthcare is treated like a fantasy

While billionaire Google co-founder Larry Page has a team of amazing engineers out in the Nevada cruising around in real life flying cars, back in the real world of the United States it seems that having a healthcare system that actually covers everybody, impoverishes nobody, and treats everyone as equally valuable and worthy of quality care continues to be something that too many powerful people want to remain an unattainable fantasy.

So there's a disconnect.

Compare this very cool thing:

To this reality, in which--due to the amount of traffic created by people patiently lining up for access to a no-cost healthcare clinic in rural Virginia--a flying car would come in particularly handy:

Last week, outgoing Starbuck's chairman Howard Schultz was pulling his hair out wanting to know how in the world we're "going to pay for these things" like universal healthcare--which is strange because nearly every other industrialized country in the world does it with a relative smile on their face.

Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has decided it is not something she wants her party to embrace, but is something she will be happy to "evaluate" if--if!--the Democrats win back Congress in the mid-term elections.

While the costs of wars that have resulted in further destabilizing and impoverishing the Middle East and South Asia continue after more than a decade and a half have cost the U.S. Treasury trillions upon trillions of dollars--with no end in sight--President Donald Trump continues to celebrate record-setting budgets for the Pentagon. Last week it was reported that the Trump administration's plan for public housing would result in a rent hike of 20 percent for the nation's struggling families.

But still, expanding Medicare to every person in the United States is considered somehow politically impossible--even though polls show that a majority of Americans, including Republicans, would support it.

So while billionaire Jeff Bezos wants to fly into space and Larry Page builds flying cars and Elon Musk peddles "not-a-flamethrowers," the poor are staying poor and the poverty-stricken and vulnerable who find themselves sick are left... back on the ground and back in reality: in a country that says it can't afford to make them count.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.