england's system is most definitely not hitting snags fyi - the conservative party are surreptitiously trying to squeeze our NHS to death but if they do it would be a death knell to their party
-
Welcome to PurpleFlock! Be sure to sign up here so that you can chat with your fellow Ravens fans.
The Well-Mannered Politics Thread
- Thread starter usmccharles
- Start date
- Status
england's system is most definitely not hitting snags fyi - the conservative party are surreptitiously trying to squeeze our NHS to death but if they do it would be a death knell to their party
Inqui
Pro Bowler
I was on the fence about responding to all this. The single point I wanted to make is that people in "socialist" countries still get plenty of choice in all facets of life, and that on a human level (ie, sitting down with a beer and watching a Ravens game even though I'm too broke to pay for them atm because I'm moving house lol) you don't need to be worried about a leftist government coming and nationalising everything and implementing a complex and inefficient system of price ceilings and price floors because it's not Latin America, and you didn't respond to any of that. I don't expect you to change your mind about healthcare, the trade war or military spending, the main thing I wanted to say was that you don't have to worry about the government taking everything over. With that said (I'll try to brief):
I do keep poo-pooing your population argument because even though you'd have more people to "take care of" you'd also have more people to shoulder the whole thing. Concepts like risk pooling and market power don't just go away in any country because you don't like the immigration system. If you like I can go into detail about all these principles, they're universal concepts and they work. But then again, if you know about healthcare economics than Nobel Prize winner Jean Tirole (and several of his peers) then maybe I should hit you up for help as I finish my Masters. It wouldn't cost trillions because, as I've said several times, the system EVERY other developed country uses is cheaper for the government and they get a better return for it (this is just government spending - treat insurance premiums as an expense and those US costs skyrocket further. On paper the US should be very lean in terms of government spending but even going back to the 1980s this hasn't been the case). You've got a whole range of systems out there that work in different ways and provide different levels of coverage, from the UK's more thorough public system to France's insurance-based system to the Dutch one that works more closely with the private sector. Honestly you can take your pick between models, they all save money. Trump himself probably agrees fwiw, if his comments in Australia are anything to go by.
https://www.military.com/dodbuzz/20...-too-much-money-not-enough-time-spend-it.html
Pentagon officials testified that they can't spend all their money in time. I also recall hearing about one of the jets being more extravagant than they need but I'm possibly remembering that one incorrectly. And don't get me started on national security. I actually agree that some areas need to be strongly backed by the public sector, and defence is absolutely one of them. But if that story comes out about the Department of Education not being able to spend enough money in time you can guarantee the talking heads on the right would be talking about socialism, so all I'm saying is that there's a bit of inconsistency there.
I read that US-EU deal when it came out. Really all they agreed to do was keep talking about reducing trade barriers, which at face value is a positive development but those talks will end the same way the previous talks used to end under every other administration - with neither side giving ground over food regulations. I'm also aware of what the Chinese stock market's been doing, but I'm also aware that they made serious moves to reduce one of their main levers of growth well before the trade war. And shooting yourself in the foot still isn't a good idea just because the bullet blasted the other guy's leg off. Justify the tariffs all you want (a lot of people agree that China's been carrying out a lot of mercantilistic practices and I actually respect Trump for making it such a high-priority issue, wrong-headed as his "solutions" are), the fact is that it's a tax on US consumers that limits their choice. If an American wants to buy NZ milk because our farmers have been able to cut costs and pass those savings onto consumers (because our government ended the agricultural subsidies many countries including the US still use), the consumer can't make that choice. By your own definition of socialism being about control and capitalism being about competition, those tariffs are socialist. It may be justified socialism, but by your definition it's still socialism. Besides, tariffs and anti-globalisation are a left-wing special - Chuck Schumer thinks Trump's tariffs don't go far enough. I'd be willing to bet money that when the Dems take the White House back (be it in two years or six) they won't do a thing to roll back the protectionism measures.
I'm well aware of Sean Hannity's work, I followed the guy and his network (among a whole lot of other people and organisations across the spectrum) for a couple of years so I could form my own opinion. The guy's not a journalist but a demagogue. We're not changing each other's minds on him, but the one question I have is whether he's really the most accurate source for finding out what left-leaning people think. If you think he's a good source for that then I honestly I have nothing else to say here.
Like I say, I don't expect to change your mind on healthcare, military spending, tariffs or any particular news sources. I'm just trying to make the point that there's still socialism in the US even if those things aren't regarded that way in mainstream thinking, but also that in every developed country you'd call socialist, they still have more than enough choices. You can still get private insurance and private healthcare if you can afford it (and it's absolutely a step up on the public system), but you're not going to go bankrupt if you can't afford it. Every single one of those countries is a market-driven one and they're wealthy and well off because of it. I asked where you heard that the left in the US wants to implement some overregulated system where everything is run by the government (because the left doesn't want that in any other country aside from maybe Latin America) and your best answer was Sean Hannity.
Last edited:
Willbacker
Ravens Ring of Honor
I have to say I really like your posts. I really do. I'd be the first to admit I'd not be on par where it comes to book intellect as I like to call it but I've used my good common sense thruout life to forge a nice solid life using our capitalistic system meaning I did this as an individual. Not a dependent.
Where I get the 3.2 tril a year was from some think tank that's supposed to be non partisan. I've heard Dems asked during interviews about this and I've never heard them once deny the cost or give a good answer about how they gonna achieve it. Also where it comes to immigration you never seem to want to recognize the severity of our issue and that yours is merit based and a lot more strict.
Ok about the tariffs you say Trump is killing the competition. Come on man you still got a choice of what to purchase lol. I mean when a country like China can just dump an overabundance of supplies cuz they use cheap labor whereas keeping prices lower for the consumer and then turn around and tax our goods at 25% we just supposed to stand by and keep getting kicked in the nuts? That causes us to have less jobs and hurts our manufacturers/agriculture. Again Trump offered EU free trade. They choose not to. Then we have Canada tariffing our dairy at 272%. So what dairy are Canadians buying? How the hell is that fair? The way I look at it is we are the #1 consumer and pretty soon people are gonna have to come to the table. We have already created close to a million jobs in manufacturing alone (I can show you an Obama clip saying these jobs are never coming back) cuz of the lower tax cuts on business and now we have to do our best to give them a platform to compete.
Tbf you was a little disingenuous about the Pentagon not wanting the money but I did want to point out that Trump did propose that agencies that couldn't use all their money be redistributed back into the treasury. Of course you know Congress...……… Its really a shame the money that is wasted to justify certain budgets cuz they have to spend it to reobtain it.
Now you seem to be singling out Sean Hannity like he's my total newssource. First off if you've listened like you've said you have then I wonder why you've never heard him say he's NOT a journalist. Says it all the time. He says he's a talk show host with a conservative agenda. Wide open about that. As for overregulation its Trumps action of loosening up these regulations that has gotten our country soaring again. Overregulation and a 38% corporate tax rate is what we had. You think that's good business? Watch it'll be over 4%GDP again in the next quarter.
How much do you know about our Constitution? We are a republic of states that form a country. Not the other way around. This is why I always argue that things like education and health should be state issues. Hell my question to anybody ( on the left especially) is that did the right country win the Revolutionary War cuz I'm dying to know why. I mean if you want the federal govt to run everything and all...………..and provide.
I'm 9 days late, but this is one of the most eloquent and well thought out posts I've seen in here from someone who empathizes with the movement.
Just poppin in to say I hate this argument to the maximum degree and it's why I hate the label of Democrat vs Republican.
Look at the states that Lincoln won through the election. Oh, right, northern states and western states that would now identify mainly as Democratic states. If we look at who filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and voted against it, it was deep, southern politicians, the same that now identify as Republicans. I mean, hell, Ronald Regan, the Republican Party's god, wanted to repeal the Civil Rights Act.
The names of political parties have shifted heavily over time, but one thing remains certain- southern states were long ago and are now very conservative and most likely to hold ideologies that oppose anything that says blacks are not given a fair shot.
Yes, this is exactly what I found difficult...
Oldfaithful
Hall of Famer
Listen, I hate political correctness as much as the next guy but there's a difference between not being politically correct and not being rude. I am one for common courtesy. For example, do I believe it should be taboo to say "Muslim extremist?".. No. I have nothing, and I repeat, nothing against Muslims at all. The fact of the matter is that there are bad apples and/or radicals with every religion. Christians had the KKK, do you want to tell me that they weren't extremists? If you don't think so you're wrong. But what the point is, they're not an absolute reflection of the people practicing that religion and neither are the Muslim extremists. I've met plenty of practicing Muslims that were good people. Judge the person, not their practices. And always be courteous. I hate political correctness too, I think that society has become overly sensitive in many regards(looking at you, people who get offended by everything), but just because I don't like it doesn't mean I have the right to go out and be a total ass. The moment debate isn't civil is the moment where compromise is impossible. That's what's wrong with this country right now.
Just my two cents.
Just my two cents.
And this is a really good point here. I live in a fairly conservative area and it's really hard to have a civil discussion because it just descends into, "Fucking libtards. Get the fuck out of here. I don't wanna hear that bullshit."
Oldfaithful
Hall of Famer
More mad at the media though the Fuckers in Congress like Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren make my blood boil.
DeVito52
Ravens Ring of Honor
True the media is worse than the government. They’re the true dividers
Ludy51
Hall of Famer
Divide=stories=$$$
Dom McRaven
Hall of Famer
More like The Powers That Be. The ones that the common man and woman don't know about.
Militant X 1
Ravens Ring of Honor
Thank you....
Inqui
Pro Bowler
Again, where are you getting this idea from? I'll reply to the rest if I get the time and energy (been a hell of a week and it will be another hell of a week coming up) because I think there's a stimulating discussion to be had about trade in particular (and I did some maths on the immigration numbers), but if there's only one thing I'd want everyone to take away from my thoughts on the world it's that modern economies don't have to run everything and that everyone still has choices - and if I feel like I have to keep reiterating that point I'm honestly not sure what the point of going over all the rest is.
I've had a great life under capitalism too as have a lot of people (not everyone has but there are small adjustments you can make to the system to fix that), and no one I know of wants to completely overthrow the system or anything. I mean, at the end of the day I like shiny things as much as anyone.
Inqui
Pro Bowler
Willbacker
Ravens Ring of Honor
This is a piece of crap. The deep southern politicians you talking were democrats( I noticed how you avoided saying that) and now you say they identify as republicans. Wth happened to the republicans back then? The southern democrat died becuz you cant win on racist policies. On Reagan he wanted it to again be a STATE issue and this was back in the sixties. Nothing about repealing while president. Quit trying to paint the Republicans as racists!!!
Also Trump took the Rust Belt which should now be referred to again as the Steel Belt and oh yes 4 out of 6 New England states have Republican govs. Its switching bro. They driving out the hate and bringing jobs back. Connecticut will be next.
It's not a piece of crap; it's history.
Actually, you'll find that Democrats shifted their focus in 1932 toward the poor and working class. FDR initiated a political shift by no longer targeting the upper class elites, but rather the poor and working class. It shifted the entire political environment, even today. That's the last time there has been a major shift within party alignment that has led to a switch in the party ideology. It was one of the first times that the Democrats had actually favored large government intervention, but it was fully backed in the New Deal. The Republican Party then vehemently opposed the New Deal measures. Of course, it took another 32 years for this to fully cement itself at the national level with presidential elections, but the seeds were sown when FDR was elected president. Remember the Rockefeller Republicans, often called Liberal Republicans? Those found in the North and North East?
One of the changes to cause a full shift back to full conservative ideology was the weakening of labor unions. The weakening power of labor unions, which peaked in the 50's and went downhill until it basically crumbled in the 70s, meant that the Republican Party, which was split on the idea of unions as it was, no longer had to rely on unions. The liberal Republicans that supported unions were no longer a necessary demographic of the Republican party and could be released without harm.
I don't have to paint the Republicans as racists, nor do I want to (again, in the 1930s-1960s, the Republicans were even split within themselves.) Again, I hate political party labels. We've gone through the Whigs, Feds, Anti-Feds, Democratic-Republicans, Progressive Party, etc. etc. Party labels are pretty irrelevant to me. What's more relevant to me is the fact that we find that the same ideology is held throughout the same states, regardless of political party affiliation. If you look at the states that were most likely to vote AGAINST the Civil Rights Act, it was deep southern states. If you look at states most likely to support the someone like Barry Goldwater, who vehemently opposed Civil Rights, it was deep southern states (you can thank Barry Goldwater, honestly, for opening the door for Republicans to be called Racist.) Again, I don't have to paint the Republicans as racist; it's a deep southern thing and that just happens to be who votes for Republicans at this point in time.
Okay, so he didn't outright support repealing it (which he'd never gather the support for; that was a mistake on my part), but he didn't support expanding these measures and even veto'd extensions, which were overruled. He was against these measures, but what's really perplexing is that he even thought the states could handle fairly enacting Civil Rights Laws in the 1980's, only 20 to 30 years after the Civil Rights Movement.
You act like those states having Republican Governor's is some groundbreaking revelation. These states go back and forth pretty heavily and even support a lot of measures that Democrats within those states would want. For example, Mitt Romney supporting and enacting universal health care for Massachusetts.
Last edited:
I just really hate how people are like, "Just get over slavery."
No, it isn't something that people can just get over. What if I told a white person to, "Just get over 9/11?" I mean, after all, it happened 17 years ago. Just get over it.
Do consider that African Americans were enslaved longer than they were not. They were without equal rights longer than they were with rights. The Civil Rights Movement was alive and well 50 to 60 years ago. There are still people alive who had to live through that racial struggle. Are we going to go up to them and tell them to get over it?
I also hate hearing about how Democrats run cities and how can African Americans support them when cities are such a mess. It completely ignores why cities are why they are in the shape they're in.
It goes back to Jim Crow Laws. Jim Crow Laws made it increasingly difficult, impossible, really, for African Americans to buy affordable housing, if they actually could buy at all. It allowed realtor's to outright deny selling to African Americans. The only places that were willing to sell were.... you guessed it, run down ghetto's in cities. On the flip side, whites were allowed to buy wherever they wanted and it often created packets of rich, upper class white homes with higher property values because it was African American free. Given the discrimination and the pay discrimination, this meant an African American would never own a house like that.
But it's more significant than that. In addition to putting African Americans in the least desirable areas possible, it created education inequality. If you had the choice to teach in the inner city or the rich suburbs, where are you going? The suburbs, of course. No one wanted to teach in the inner city where it was ghetto and heavily African American. This meant that African Americans received a much poorer education, never mind Plessy v Ferguson, and couldn't actually move up. They didn't have the proper education or tools to consistently move up.
It's also significant to put all the African Americans into cities because it allows for easier policing. What's easier to police: a city where people are stacked on top of each other or a rural area where everyone is spread apart? The city. This leads to blacks being more targeted and disproportionately policed in these areas.
It is incredibly ignorant to say, "Just get over it," to the topic of slavery and discrimination because the Civil Rights didn't end until 50 years ago and the struggles that went into the movement are alive and well today and have shaped how our country has turned out.
I just really hate that it's white males telling people to get over slavery. Yes, the group that didn't have to experience slavery or the Civil Rights Movement at its fullest should tell the group that did how it should heal.
I actually saw a great comparison. Say we're 10 years old and I just take a bat and break your legs. I smash them to pieces and tell you I hate you.
Sure, you can go to the doctor, get a cast, and it'll heal, but I bet you $1,000,000 that if I saw you 80 years from that day, you would still be pissed. But oh wait, your legs healed and you can walk again. Why are you mad? It's pretty obvious why.
Last edited:
Ludy51
Hall of Famer
A. Fuck you for that statement in particular, white people have absolutely been enslaved in the past
and
B. I wasn't aware we still had living american slaves
- Status