Chinese social media users have mocked Donald Trump with an AI-generated video showing overweight Americans working in factories.

A viral 30-second clip shows a series of miserable-looking rotund Americans slowly sewing garments and building smartphones on crowded shop floors.

The video, which is set to Chinese music, is called “make America great again” and has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

https://archive.ph/IMju4

edit: added youtube link

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=elfkzkNqCuQ

  • taladar@sh.itjust.works
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    3 days ago

    You do realize that employers do pay a share of the healthcare cost in other countries too? They are just not given as many choices about it as in the US.

    • CalipherJones@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Oh boy the choice to pay 450$ a month or have my whole family bankrupted by a procedure!

      Oh you have the 450$ a month plan? Enjoy still getting ripped off by the scummiest industry in America.

      • Wanpieserino@lemm.ee
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        3 days ago

        I imagine a lot of Americans give birth at home to reduce costs.

        Perhaps I’m just cheap

        • CalipherJones@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Well a quick Google search says an at home birth cost 3000-9000 out of pocket. Thought that was a lot until I saw this. “Giving birth costs $18,865 on average, including pregnancy, delivery and postpartum care, according to the Peterson-Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) Health System Tracker.” (https://www.forbes.com/advisor/health-insurance/how-much-does-it-cost-to-have-a-baby/)

          Amazing how our society has found a way to bill us for literally becoming alive.

          Officials are like “whys nobody having kids??” Meanwhile I don’t even have enough cash to cover the fucking birth.

      • Critical_Thinker@lemm.ee
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        3 days ago

        That’s cute that you think $450 a month gets you an insurance plan. At that price it’s subsidized by somebody.

        My employer sponsored plan costs me $300 a month and they pay $1200 a month. It’s still high deductible. It still covers next to nothing. My wife’s necessary life saving meds still hit the deductible each year, costing me several thousand dollars additionally.

        • Zedd_Prophecy@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          My wife and I have a deductible of 9,000 - It pretty much means I’ll hope a broken toe heals correctly and not see a doctor. . It didnt and now hurts most of the time. I have food and gas money tho.

          • Critical_Thinker@lemm.ee
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            3 days ago

            3300/6600 here. 6000/12000 out of pocket maximum though.

            I’m basically dinged for 3300 whenever I need health services other than a yearly physical or an eye exam.

            Every january we drop 3300 on meds for my wife and she gets eaten alive with copays for all her specialist visits.

            The $1000 deductible plan my employer offers costs $1062/month for family and you still pay $40 per visit as a copay, and the employer is still dropping that $1500/month - so you’re effectively paying $30,744 to insure a family of 3 and that’s not all-in on expenses. Plus since $1000 is a “low” deductible you don’t get to keep basically anything you put into your FSA, unless you know you’re gonna use it all. Why medical expenses are ever subject to taxes is beyond me. The whole thing should be single payer… we could probably operate on a third of the budget we have today without giving any worker providing care to patients any kind of pay cut. The middle men (insurance) do very well.

            They can only make profits off of something like 20-25% of overall revenue, the rest must be spent on “providing and improving” patient care. Hiring bean counters to make sure you maximize your revenue and reject as many costly applicants as possible is part of the “providing and improving” part, so they spend substantially less than 75% of their revenue on actual treatment.

            • Zedd_Prophecy@lemmy.world
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              3 days ago

              Good Lord what a dystopian future we live in. I was born in the 70s when the universe was fairly normal and the dream was still something you could achieve. I’m kinda glad I’m old and won’t see how bad it will get here.

      • taladar@sh.itjust.works
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        3 days ago

        Not my point. Obviously the US system is complete shit but the healthcare cost is still part of the cost of labor for production of goods in other countries too.

        • fantoozie@midwest.social
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          3 days ago

          Yeah no shit but in other countries you don’t have insurance companies and a laundry list of middlemen skimming half the revenue from your payments before a doctor even sees you.

        • BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Difference is you don’t have to worry about medical issues if you lose your job cause it’s not tied to your employment

    • AwkwardBroccolli@lemmy.ml
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      3 days ago

      Healthcare IIRC is free in China. I am not sure whether something changed or not but it was free of cost.

        • AwkwardBroccolli@lemmy.ml
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          3 days ago

          In US you have to pay tax as well as pay extra for insurance. The insurance is not a full insurance as well. There is copay and a certain value below which insurance does not even start. Its a scam.

          • T156@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            And the insurance can boot you off, or refuse to cover you if you’re too expensive.

            So if you got cancer, and had to spend a million dollars to treat it, your insurance could just go “okay, your treatment is too expensive, we’re not covering that, you’ll have to pay for this yourself”.

            It used to be worse. Many years ago, they could outright decide not to cover some medical conditions of yours, deeming them to be “pre-existing”. So if you had diabetes, sorry, that’s a pre-existing condition. We don’t cover those.

            Nail in the coffin is that Americans spend more money on healthcare, per capita, than most other countries, without marked improvement in care/outcomes.

        • BackgrndNoize@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          And do you not realize that the private insurance you pay for also pays for others insurance, if others don’t pay their insurance money your premiums go up to compensate for it

    • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br
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      3 days ago

      “‘Right-to-work’ means freedom and choice,” a Boston Globe op-ed explains. “As housing costs rise, some people are choosing to live on the road instead,” a Fox Business headline states. “If your insurance company isn’t doing right by you, you should have another, better choice,” reads Joe Biden’s campaign platform. We’re told repeatedly that “freedom of choice” is essential to a robust economy and human happiness. Economists, executives, politicians, and pundits insist that, the same way consumers shop for TVs, workers can choose their healthcare plan, parents can choose their kids’ school, and gig-economy workers can choose their own schedules and benefits.

      While this language is superficially appealing, it’s also profoundly deceitful. The notion of “choice” as a gateway to freedom and a sign of societal success isn’t a neutral call for people to exercise some abstract civic power; it’s free-market capitalist ideology manufactured by libertarian and neoliberal think tanks and their mercenary economists and media messaging nodes. Its purpose: to convince people that they have a choice while obscuring the economic factors that ensure they really don’t: People can’t “choose” to keep their employer-provided insurance if they’re fired from their jobs or “choose” to enroll their kids in private school if they can’t afford the tuition.

      In this episode, we examine the rise of “choice” rhetoric, how it cravenly appeals to our vanity, and how US media has uncritically adopted the framing–helping the right erode social services while atomizing us all into independent, self-interested collections of “choices.”

      We are joined by Jessica Stites, executive editor of In These Times.

      https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/traffic.libsyn.com/secure/citationsneeded/CN95_20191205_choice_Stites_v2.mp3?dest-id=542191

    • dellish@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Yay! We get to choose how to pay a ridiculous price something that’s free in other countries! Yay, choice!