Quote (Black XistenZ @ 26 Mar 2020 05:31)
The Northern European countries do NOT have democratic socialism, they have social democracy. This sounds like splitting hairs, but it's actually a huge difference!
In social democracies, like e.g. Sweden or Denmark, you have a capitalistic free market system with high taxes and a generous welfare state facilitating a large degree of redistribution.
In democratic socialism, the state owns the means of production and steers large parts of the economy. In contrast to Soviet-Union-style communism, the government figures responsible for this planning and steering process are still subject to democratic elections, at least in theory.
In particular, note that politicians like Bernie Sanders or AOC are indeed democratic socialists, they propagate a political and economic model which is significantly to the left of Sweden/Denmark/etc.!
A single payer system isnt necessary to achieve higher coverage and cost efficiency. Countries like the Netherlands, Germany or Austria have very successful healthcare system which arent single payer (specifically, what we have is "universal multi-payer"). In fact, single payer systems like the British NHS or the Australian Medicare have their own problems and disadvantages.
well, i'm certainly used to a baseline of dishonesty from you, but this is just incredible, even by your own standards. you know very well that this is complete BS, and not at all what sanders is advocating for - you're just spreading red scare propaganda at this point.
i mean, should i be surprised to see that kind of fearmongering from you? probably not, but it seems like you have given up even the pretense of arguing based on anything resembling facts and truths at this point...