Not to mention the cultural importance that the US military as an institution has on the US, of course.
https://www.selectusa.gov/financial-services-industry-united...
What's the size of the financial sector of Luxembourg or Switzerland?
Well, actually, since you brought it up ...
The SNB has been buying euros, and other currencies (selling swiss francs) since 2011 in an effort to depress its value, which they believe is too high and hurts their exports.
Here is a decent summary of the events leading up to their interventions and the current scenario:
https://admiralmarkets.com/analytics/traders-blog/price-shoc...
In summary, the CHF is viewed by many market participants as a safe-haven, or reserve currency (especially in Europe) and the Swiss National Bank has been acting, unilaterally, for many years to manipulate the CHF downwards in value.
The USD is the world's reserve currency because we have a balance of being the largest economy with a fair rule of law, lots of real estate, 50 competing states, natural resources, and the manufacturing expertise that means if anything goes super wrong we're the best place to be.
Luxembourg and Switzerland also have a history of being tax havens.
Higher education for all would cost at least $600 billion (close to the existing spending for all post secondary institutions annually), more likely $750b+ with the cost expansion that would entail.
You obviously can't eliminate all of the US defense budget. That would be wildly irrational and dangerous. Let's say the best you can do is a 2% of GDP expenditure rate, or roughly $400 billion per year.
That $300 billion directed at universal healthcare would pay for the healthcare of 20 million people, 6% of the US population.
Mmm. No.
In 2016, government spending on healthcare would have been lowered by $435 billion and covered every single American if we somehow had transplanted Canada's healthcare system and costs to the US.
Total healthcare spending (including co-pay and what not), would have been lowered by $1.6 trillion.
Indeed, we could have increased to coverage to every American just with the government healthcare spending we already have with a similar transplant of all but 3 countries systems/costs the OECD collects data for.
That said, that would all be taken right out of the GDP hitting the economy pretty hard.
--
US Federal healthcare spending (2016): $944.1 billion
US State & local healthcare spending (2016): $564.5 billion
Total gov spending (2016): $944.1 + $564.5 = $1.508 trillion
Canada govt spending (2016): $3,319 per capita
US population (2016): 323.4 million
Cost with Canada's system (2016): $3,319 * 323.4M = $1.073 trillion
Get back to me when you’ve convinced US healthcare workers to take a 30-50% pay cut. Until then, US healthcare will remain more expensive than developed countries that don’t routinely compensate doctors and nurses at the level we do.
The cost of care in this country is not a function of salary; it's a function of grotesque inefficiencies in the system.
When I dug into this during the attempt to repeal the ACA, what I found was the US pays 50% to many times more per capita for much worse outcomes than any other first world nation, with comparisons against Japan being particularly bleak.
Furthermore, that is the result of systemic inefficiencies here resulting from, in a nutshell, protected oligopolies and preservation of profits.
One underreported aspect of the ACA was that in order to secure recalcitrant GOP votes, the Democrats essentially caved on everything other their mandatory features–namely, on allowing the GOP to engineer in changes written by the health care industry and IMO extorted at gunpoint.
The result has been clear, the industry has enjoyed record profits since the ACA passed. So much so that one of the problems with the attempt to appeal it or weaken it was that the GOP and its industry interest groups had already gotten most of the things on their wish list.
The worst part of this trainwreck is that for much more money, we enjoy far worse outcomes when you consider most any metric that matters to people: life expectancy, infant mortality, incidence of chronic disease, incidence of disruptive mental illness, incidence of opiate addiction, and so on. In all of these we trail not only the rest of the first world but many countries in the developing world.
There are other factors such as a diet and lifestyle distorted by e.g. the sugar lobby, but even when you 'correct' for those things, the quality of service we get does not make for healthy or happy citizens.
Then add the likelihood of personal bankruptcy or financial ruin as the result of carefully engineered carefully obscured limitations on coverage.
None of this is particularly hidden or hard to uncover; it's just utterly obscured by GOP empty distracting whipping horse talking points and scare tactics.
There are, of course, inefficiencies in every system, and without a doubt, the US system of health care has more than universal health care.
We might be able to shave 10% off the health care system by doing away with those inefficiencies, and conceivably another 5% by bulk negotiating on pharmaceuticals.
But given the (I believe correct) statistics that are bandied about showing the US healthcare system is 50-75% more expensive than other systems, where do you think the rest of that money is going?
It’s labor.
Edit: I did some of my own research, UHC take 8~11% GDP in other countries. That would put us around 1.8 trillion (2016 GDP). Much less than $3.5 trillion you claimed.
Plus, US is already spending 16% of GDP (~3 trillion) on health care, despite not having universal healthcare. 11% GDP for UHC does not seem like a bad idea to me
The way UHC costs less is by paying doctors and nurses less. Negotiating lower pharmaceutical rates and reducing billing costs is nice and all, but it’s tiny compared to labor costs.
It turns out, doctors and nurses are very popular, and they vote their economic interest. Good luck getting UHC in the US that pays them less.
I think you're forgetting that right now, the cost of healthcare is externalized to the citizens. So, yes, we'd pay more in taxes for socialized healthcare, but we get more in our paycheck because our companies don't have to deal with private health insurance anymore. Especially with the mandate...everyone is aalready paying for health care in some form or other.
Not to mention that many projections show socialized healthcare would be a net gain as far as money being spent goes.
In other words, socialized healthcare would more than pay for itself, if US citizens weren't so fucking stupid about labeling things "socialism" when it has nothing to do with the workers seizing the means of production.
/s