U.S. President Donald Trump says Canadians would have “much better” health coverage if Canada became the 51st state.

He made the remarks during a briefing in North Carolina, where he toured areas struck by Hurricane Helene on Friday.

“I would love to see Canada be the 51st state,” he said. “The Canadian citizens, if that happened, would get a very big tax cut – a tremendous tax cut – because they are very highly taxed.”

“They’d have much better health coverage. I think the people of Canada would like it,” said the president.

  • emeralddawn45
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    21 hours ago

    Yeah i get why the lobbyists want it. I dont get why the answer from so many citizens seems to be “i dont want my taxes to go up”. Like bro youre paying ten times the amount now that you would in any tax increase.

    • ControllerCat@lemmy.ca
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      19 hours ago

      A lot lf Americans just don’t think about it that way. There’s a multitude of reasons based more on sentiment and group social pressure than the obvious math.

      Many Americans have a great deal of personal optimism to the tune of “well I’m not sick right now”. It’s a gamble that everyone loses, but in the short term you keep more money. It speaks to the belief that personal heath is a moral virtue (or failing), therefore a moral person shouldn’t have to pay for immoral people’s “bad choices”. And, if someone didn’t save enough money to invest in their own health, that’s also a moral failure.

      There’s also terror of appearing too feminine. Care, either receiving it, or giving it to others, is feminine coded for a lot of Americans. So, paying into (and participating in) a broad public healthcare system becomes a crisis of masculine self (and group) identity. sarcasm You wouldn’t want people to think you’re a sissy right? sarcasm

      Er, sorry for the wall of text.