Australia, Canada Germany and most of Scandinavia do exist..

bernie already fell on his sword on this

Denmark's prime minister says Bernie Sanders is wrong to call his country socialist

https://www.vox.com/2015/10/31/9650030/denmark-prime-minister-bernie-sanders

What is called "Social Democracy" in the rest of the world tends to get called "Socialism" in the United States.

The U.S. society would certainly be better off if they adopted some selected policies of social democracy. But those who say that adopting the full "Scandinavian model" in the U.S. would work are delusional. It only works in homogenous societies, and only if access to the generous welfare state is meticulously controlled and strictly enforced.

And we also shouldnt overlook that the political left in the U.S. has been drifting to the left a lot in recent years. The far left nowadays want to go beyond the Scandinavian model, they want an approach that really (and not just terminologically) borders on true socialism.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 23 2018 01:48pm

you only read the headline, didn't you?

it's true, none of those countries are really socialist - bernie just uses the word the same way the fearmongers on the right use it.
by that flawed definition, all the countries that are much better, safer, happier, healthier, freer, and wealthier places to live in are 'socialist' - with universal healthcare, affordable education, worker protection... all while having free market economies. it's not sanders' fault that simple minded right wingers don't do nuance and blindly accept the ridiculous propaganda from the very people who profit the most from their voters opposing their own best interest, based on a certain misleading buzzword.

it's really one of the basic moves from the right wing playbook: indoctrinate your gullible base with a term they will subsequently identify as negative, and then mislabel everything you want them to hate with this term. like 'obamacare' - though it's undeniably flawed, when you just explain the policy and its intentions, it has massive support, even amongst right wingers - but calling it by the name of the president who introduced it gets you the conditioned negative response and rejection.

if sanders suggested a planned economy or the abolishment of private property, i'd agree with the fearmongers - but his actual policies would only try to gain control of the government back from greedy corporate america: to make politicians represent their voters, and not their donors. to spend your taxes on education, worker rights, and healthcare - rather than wallstreet bailouts, taxbreaks for the 1%, and wars. if you don't like that, you're free to support someone else, but labeling it 'socialist' and suggesting it would lead to venezuelan or cuban conditions is highly dishonest - and to blindly believe that is borderline retarded...

This post was edited by fender on Sep 23 2018 02:18pm

European healthcare has less regulations than US healthcare. By many measures its more capitalist than America. America also has different demographics too so you cant compare healthcare outcomes without considering the causes.

To your second point, thats what raising taxes for welfare programs is, the government extorting your private property.

No one advocates a social dictatorship though which is what the right keeps trying to present..
If the right were right on this they could just be honest instead of manipulative.
Every time someone mentions better healthcare you bring up Venezuela instead of australia or Germany.

😐

my god... you are one angry fellow....

the points you make here are mostly correct, but misleading since your perspective is very one-sided. take the obamacare example:

yes, when people are polled for the individual provisions of obamacare, most of them poll favorably. the ones that give people free stuff. what's very unpopular, even aside from the negative "obamacare = bad"-branding, is the individual mandate - which is the exact provision that's paying for everything. so tldr: people like free stuff as long as you make them believe that no one has to pay for it.

and yes, if you explain the idea and concept of obamacare to people, the way it is supposed to work, this theoretical, ideal version of obamacare polls well. the big issue that you fail to acknowledge here is that the real obamacare doesnt work as intended. all the promises that "everyone will be able to keep his/her doctor" and that "no one who already has coverage will have to pay more for it" were blatantly broken.

so when people hear the term "obamacare", they associate it with their own, personal experiences with the real obamacare, and not with the optimistic and unrealistic promises from the democratic advertising brochures.


you often accuse others of lacking nuance, but here, it is actually you who's lacking it. yes, there was a lot of successful negative branding against obamacare, but there also were quite a lot of people who really got fucked over by it. thus, rejecting the real obamacare as it was rolled out does not automatically make one "gullible", a "braindead cultist" or a "low-information voters who votes against his/her own interest".

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Sep 23 2018 03:51pm

dont be surprised but i agree on alot in your post, a country at the level of USA should have better healthcare, and the wallstreet and the 1% deal is absolutely rotten.

i do however think bernie is weak (getting cucked in his own rally and laying down to the DNC without a fight), and senile for 30++ years now (his comment justifying bread lines was in 1985), and the current face of socializm in usa (if its fair to call her that) is a dummy (alexandria cortezio)

it would do alot for their better acceptance if they would stop calling themselves socialists (especially if the system they want to implement, is not classic socializm but the best of both worlds mixture with capitalism). Its too easy to argue against Socialism. Instead call themselves Social Democrats (not Democratic Socialists like they do now, because emphasis is still on Socialism), or even Social Republican Democrats - to grind everyones gears.

But as we know that bernie got "election meddling'd" by domestic nationals known as the DNC out of the primaries, the system might be too rotten to get anywhere even with a more acceptable, catchy name for the ideology.

This post was edited by HeLiCaL on Sep 23 2018 04:16pm