"figure out why people vote the way they do"
Because they are being conned to believe it is not the bankers or the corporates or those who's coatpockets are brimming with money that took their share of the wealth, it is the dirtpoor immigrants.
Because they are being conned to believe it is not the bankers or the corporates or those who's coatpockets are brimming with money that took their share of the wealth, it is the dirtpoor immigrants.
pretty sure we spend that extra money on our worse health outcomes and SUVs are terrible to drive.
US Healthcare as it stands is a non-free market run by private entities. It isn't immediately obvious that a non-free market run by the government is the way to go. It might be possible to get the best of both worlds by going to a free market run by private entities. The potential to have low costs and the economic edge from low taxes is surely quite enticing.
Yes, it is. Any market you're forced to participate in, lest you die, is not and cannot ever be a "free market".
Any market in which you, at the moment you need its goods or services, cannot reasonably be expected to evaluate multiple options, due to the urgency of the need, cannot be considered free.
Yes, obviously, we all need food, but I have some in my refrigerator now, and I ate breakfast this morning, so I have some time to decide whether to go to Price Chopper, Wegman's, or Hannaford to buy my next week's meals. Even in the most urgent circumstance (someone who is literally starving right now), the choice of which grocery store to go to to purchase the food that will save their life is a fairly small decision: most will have something that can serve that need for a vaguely reasonable price, and then that decision will be done, and they'll have the time to consider, "But do I want to go to that one for my next food purchase, or is one that's farther away a better option?"
Healthcare can sometimes be like that. We have some freedom to shop around and choose where to get elective surgeries, ongoing maintenance/preventative care, etc. But if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, even assuming I were conscious and coherent enough to make such a choice, I wouldn't be in a position to say, "No, I don't want to go to the closest hospital; I want to go to the one three counties over, because their trauma ward is better." If I waited that long, I'd die.
Furthermore, the vast majority of Americans don't have any meaningful choice in their health insurance provider. They get it through their employer, paying out of pocket would be prohibitively expensive, and the employer isn't just going to give you what they'd be paying for your plan so you can buy another. For those who have to pay out of pocket, there still aren't great options, because the vast majority of insurance plans that are remotely within reach of people who don't have the absurd luck to get six-to-seven-figure Silicon Valley-style salaries are high-deductible plans, meaning you're still going to be paying thousands upon thousands of dollars out of pocket for care if anything happens. And then there's the issues with figuring out what's in-network and what's not...
Put simply, the healthcare "market" in America is not merely un-free because it is fundamentally coercive, it is also deliberately obfuscatory in terms of what you get for your money, and even how much you'll have to pay in many cases—and remember, a free market absolutely relies on full information.
As for the idea that only non-essential markets can be free - I live a pretty spartan existence. All the markets I participate in are basically at threat of death or catastrophic lifestyle disruption except for my internet connection and book collection.
In particular that point falls apart when food is considered. We had an inquiry into the price of milk in Australia because the greedy corporations were setting it too low. One of my favourite bits of parliamentary theatre ever.
As to worse health outcomes: Minnesota has a life expectancy comparable to Sweden. Asian Americans in the United States have a life expectancy longer than Asians in Japan, Hong Kong, or Singapore. Looking at the averages skews the fact that much of our disparities in outcomes is not across the board, but the result of disenfranchised minority groups having much worse outcomes than the majority of the population. But your average voter skews more white, older, suburban, married, wealthier, etc., than the general population. The health outcomes for these people are not appreciably, if at all, worse than in Europe.
What you're chalking up as some conspiracy by "the rich" against "everyone else" is better understood as white middle class voters voting for policies that benefit themselves at the expense of disenfranchised minorities. It's not the "rich people" and "corporates" (which Europe has too!) but rather the majority's treatment of the disenfranchised minority (which comprises a much larger fraction of the U.S. population than in most European countries). (In that sense, I'd say that the extreme left wing has a better argument than the moderate left wing. In a world where white Minnesotans have similar health outcomes to white Swedes, while predominantly African American Mississippians live the better part of a decade less, race is a much more important issue than economic policy. And you can't blame the "corporates" for that.)
The health outcomes in the US are better than the EU for people who have health insurance. The mean outcomes are worse in the US because of people without health insurance significantly bringing down the average, but people in the US who do have private insurance are not wrong to want to preserve their own (higher) quality of care while finding a better solution for those currently uninsured. (There are also some other factors like lower population density increasing emergency response times, so the outcomes in rural areas are worse and the US is more rural, which would obviously not be remedied by single payer.)
And "SUVs are terrible to drive" is trivially empirically testable -- if both SUVs and smaller vehicles are available and people willingly choose SUVs anyway, we know what they prefer. If you want to argue against SUVs then make the environmental argument about externalities that might actually hold water, not "SUVs are terrible to drive" which is a subjective opinion that millions of people evidently disagree with.
I have no idea how it works in France, but if I were a rich person trying to find the country with the best ROI for my influence-dollars, it would be a large powerful country rather than a small one, and one where the law is set up specifically to encourage unlimited financial contributions to political causes.
What you pointed out in your initial comment is totally true, though. The "current powers" have nothing to do with what side of the political fence they're on. There are rich people on both sides and they tend to support and fund things that keep them rich. And that's what we end up with as policy, regardless of what letter is next to lawmakers' names. The red-vs-blue distinction is manufactured tribalism and doesn't really have much of an effect on who public policy actually ends up benefiting.
I wouldn't say dumb or easily, but a large portion of us I would agree are being duped. I mean you have entire swaths of the country that believe "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" is actually serious advice, and not the sarcastic and ridiculous statement it was originally coined as. The streak of individualism present in most places but especially in the States has been hijacked to great effect to make people more willing to vote against their better interests in the name of what's sold to them as "freedom."
Perhaps they're both problematic!
If all you have to add is "my opposition is stupid and uninformed" perhaps you should refrain from commenting.