> Because you don't necessarily need an American salary to pay taxes that cover these facilities.

That is a weirdly employee centric view. I'm talking about the US economy. American salaries depend on American businesses. America has some of the best healthcare available in the world. If US businesses are fucked due to the beliefs of citizens (or whatever else), then the US socialised healthcare is fucked too. There's plenty of poorly run countries to compare against (including Cuba where I discovered their lies about their healthcare first-hand as a tourist). NZ socialised healthcare is okay but our economy is not improving and regardless of our desires for more, the social benefits have no choice but to match our economic output.

> it's starting to affect basic survival, let alone any pursuit of happiness

Only if you're one-eyed. US citizens are the rich. In a fair world we would tax all Americans at 90% and redistribute that to the poor in the rest of the world. Maybe same for NZ too (Wikipedia shows that NZ's disposable median income is ⅔ that of the US however it also strangly says that NZ's median wealth is nearly double that of the US -- I'm guessing because houses are more unaffordable in NZ). Income is usually a better measure within an economy of useful output (economies can't really save for next year). The US federal poverty line is about $16000 for one person - a hell of a lot of money for people in many countries.

> Making hypotheticals of "well look on the bright side, you're not dead" doesn't help either.

I guess you're referring to my comment "Compare yourself to a dead king - what is fair?".

My obfuscated point is that few people (maybe narcissists) would give up their modern life to live in past poverty. Antibiotics, freedom, technology, access to the intellectual output of the world. We are mostly a lot better off than the past. Most people don't value that instead they are money-centric (as many of your comments are). Most people seem to compare themselves to people that are wealthier than themselves and then complain about how they are not getting their fair share. Few people compare themselves against the global poor and then talk about how much they should share their wealth downwards. They talk about how others should share their wealth - they rarely seem to consider how they should share their own wealth. Especially ironic given that it appears that the majority of commenters on HN are the wealthy of the world (and often part of the tech overlords - e.g. YC).

The US is often a parasite upon other countries. If you were to say that the US pays it back to poor countries with technology (mostly from rich companies), then you would be implicitly arguing that wealthy US companies deserve to be wealthy. I recall that weapons are the biggest US export (nice!)

I guess I'm saying is really take care not to kill your geese laying golden eggs (even if you think the geese seem to be keeping too much golden egg to themselves): the socialised good that you have depends on those geese (US businesses). The bad is bad but don't destroy the good.

An economy is a delicate balance - as shown by many failed economies.

> When America starts using that wealth to make sure no one in a first person country isn't dying on the street

I've think I've answered that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43148513

Cheers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income