The Numbers That Matter
I showed Ro my favorite graph - the one where economists tell us real median household income has been going up. According to FRED, everything's great! Real wages are up! The economy's fantastic!
But here's what I track instead: the actual cost of housing, food, utilities, transportation, education, healthcare, and childcare. No hedonic adjustments. No geometric means. Just what shit actually costs. And guess what? People aren't crazy. They're broke.
Ro made a great point - the median wage charts hide what's happening in hollowed-out communities. Silicon Valley's doing great. East Tennessee? Not so much. The national averages mask the geographic devastation that NAFTA and the China shock caused.
Healthcare is Eating America Alive
Here's the stat that blew Ro's mind: Japan spends 1.6% on healthcare administration. We spend 33%.
Let that sink in. One-third of our healthcare spending goes to people denying claims and pushing paper. We have 1.4 million people adjudicating claims and only 1 million doctors. Athena Health says healthcare administrators have increased 320% since 1975. There are now 10 administrators for every doctor.
Ro's response was perfect: "We need more doctors." But it goes deeper than that. We need to blow up the entire system.
Why Business Should Want Medicare for All
I asked Ro something that's been bugging me for years - why aren't businesses screaming for Medicare for All? Ford has more healthcare costs in every car than steel. These Fortune 500 companies are spending 25-30% of payroll on healthcare.
Toyota distributes Japan's healthcare costs across their entire society. American manufacturers start in a hole because of healthcare. So why aren't they fighting for this?
Ro's answer: They're focused on short-term gains. Tax cuts make their stock go up today. Fighting for systemic healthcare reform is hard. But privately, they know it would help.
We Gave Away Our Future
Tim Cook says we can't bring iPhone manufacturing back because we don't have the engineers, the techs, or the machines. You know who trained China's workforce? Apple. To the tune of $50 million a year.
We thought we'd be the managerial class of the world. Other people would build stuff, we'd shuffle money around and design things. How's that working out?
China went from half our energy production to double it in 15 years. They've built 22,000 miles of high-speed rail while we've built 500. They're shocked when China innovates because they bought into their own racist bullshit that China could only copy, not create.
Stop Waiting for Permission
The most frustrating part of my conversation with Ro came when he said we need to wait for either Hakeem Jeffries or a presidential candidate to define the Democratic agenda.
We're always waiting. It's never the right time to go big. Meanwhile, Trump's talking about conquering Greenland and we're nervous about Medicare for All.
Here's what Ro gets that most Democrats don't: organizing works. Mass movements work. We don't need permission from leadership to start fighting for:
Medicare for All (saving money while covering everyone)
Reindustrializing America
Taking on the administrative bloat that's killing us
Building shit again
The American DNA
Ro ended with something important - what we're calling for isn't radical. It's American. Hamilton did it. Lincoln did it. FDR did it. Eisenhower got the Interstate Highway System built as a defense project.
We know how to do this. We've done it before. The question is whether Democrats will stop being so fucking risk-averse and actually fight for it.
The statistics have to catch up to people's lived experience, Ro said. Or maybe - and here's a wild thought - we should stop trusting statistics that tell us everything's fine when people are financing their groceries.
We need national leadership that coordinates with local communities, subjects itself to market tests, but points toward something bigger than shareholder value. We need markets in service of people.
And we need to stop waiting for someone to give us permission to fight for it.
Watch the full conversation if you want to see a Silicon Valley congressman realize in real-time just how fucked our healthcare system is. And if you're as tired as I am of Democrats asking "how we gonna pay for it" while we burn $75 trillion on a broken system, maybe it's time to stop waiting for leadership and start organizing.
What's your take? Are Democrats too risk-averse or am I expecting too much? Drop a comment and let's argue about it.
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