The case for Social Democracy.

I agree on all points. And I’ll add that a huge demographic of the US just isn’t going to volunteer for any socialism. It’s not in our DNA. It’s why we are of European descent but no longer reside in Europe. I mean no disrespect to any Europeans either. We’re just different.

The Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness thing isn’t just words to us and socialism, whether voluntary or coerced, gets in the way of these tenets. Security at all costs at other’s expense not only seems wrong, but frankly it bores us.

 

Oh, so I guess the ballooning debt of the US, which is due mostly to entitlements, is just a natural result of this type of socialism. No thanks.

 

Has nothing to do with our entitlements but our endless and expensive wars. Bill Clinton left country in surplus with all these social programs. Anyway public debt is different than private debt. Public debt is infinite as it is denominated in one country's own currency, mmt philosophy

Medicare for all saves money. Trillions of dollars. Free college could've been paid with Trumps 100 bil dollar increase to military budget and then some.

 

Nobody here is mooching off the system. Of course you will have some, just like in every country and system of govt, but not a majority. American's have just as much of a unifying working culture than any country.

These are not reasons why social democracy wouldn't work here.

 

Wrong....

https://www.google.com/amp/www.pewr...rs-on-social-insurance-programs-mostly/?amp=1

Now that we have established your argument as crap we can see how communism keeps trying to reinvent itself.

 

Correct - social democrat.

 

These comments are much too accurate/sensible...

 

Facts hurt, I see. Of course these programs are the most costly to the govt. But these programs are not the reason we are in debt. It is endless war and trillions of dollars spent overseas which got us here.

 

None of that is true. Social Security for one is being abused horrendously. SNAP benefits are handed out like candy on Halloween around here. It’s insane.

The US used to have a decent work ethic but it’s been destroyed with these social programs. Now the work ethic stinks. Bad.

Scandinavian countries have much more productive workers than the US. When they migrate to the US they put native citizens to shame. Their success is on par with Asian Americans. The vast majority of US citizens take no advantage of opportunity.

 

I know right. Turns out improving people's lives by giving them healthcare and education is sensible.

 

These social programs have not contributed to the downfall of the american work ethic in fact quite the opposite. The reason why the Scandinavians have such a great work ethic is precisely because of these policies, because no matter what your background or financial situation is, it is your hard work and determination that gets you success, this even improves workplace productivity.

Mooching is an inevitable part of government that can't be stopped, unless you want to return to virtually pure unadulterated capitalism, and we all know where that went aka The great depression.

 

Summary of video.

The video goes into detail debunking right wing claims against universal healthcare and education, providing OECD data, and various statistics with regards to how many americans skip insurance and care all together because it is too expensive. It also goes into detail about how homogeneity and small population size are not the reason these social democratic countries can implement these policies. It is very informative. This youtuber also has some other videos going into even more detail about US and Euro healthcare with waiting lines, etc..

 

Scandinavian work ethic is cultural not based on policy. Without the cultural ethic the social programs couldn’t exist. The horse pulls the cart. The cart cannot pull the horse.

I don’t know what cabbage leaf you live under but if you don’t see our current social programs destroying work ethic you aren’t really engaged in the economy or with average Americans.

Mooching is not inevitable. Our programs are intentionally designed to be abused. And to be a permanent lifestyle choice, not a safety net.

 

Mooching is inevitable. No it isn't designed to be a lifestyle choice, another lie. Scandinavian work ethic is not solely cultural, this is a lie. These policies have increased their work ethic. What you are saying just isn't true.

 

Sure, I’m a liar. Get out in the real world and learn how your policies actually affect people’s decisions and behaviors. You have theories but are ignorant of results of practical application of them. So it has always been and so it will always be.

 

Sure,... ignorant of results of practical application of them, like Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland Germany, France, UK, etc.?

Wonder how the theory of virtually pure unadulterated capitalism worked... hmmm?

 

Like the theory of when people are sick and don't have the money for care, they are going to die?

 

Here is what private healthcare was like in US history. Pre-govt intervention.

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2012/jan/20/was-early-1960s-golden-age-health-care/



As for the broader picture of pre-1965 health care in America, Rosemary Stevens, a historian and sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote that "in the early 1960s, the choices for uninsured elderly patients needing hospital service were to spend their savings, rely on funding from their children, seek welfare (and the social stigma this carried), hope for charity from the hospitals or avoid care altogether."



To double-check this assertion, we turned to a study by the Social Security Administration known as the Survey of the Aged.



The survey was taken in 1963, and its findings were published in 1964 -- the "early '60s" Paul is talking about. One downside of the data is that it only looks at Americans 65 and older. So it doesn't give a full picture of how the health care system functioned in the early 1960s. However, as we’ll discuss later, senior citizens are a key to analyzing the state of American health care, since their health needs were, and remain, more acute than the overall population's.



Overall, the study found that "the complex task of paying for necessary health services and providing adequate insurance for non-budgetable expenses remains beyond the economic capabilities of most aged persons."



In all, slightly more than half of Americans 65 and older had health insurance at the end of 1962. That works out to 64 percent of couples, 49 percent of un-married women and 37 percent of un-married men.



"And what they had was terrible insurance -- it didn’t do much to cover them," said

Dorothy Pechman Rice, a retired professor at the University of California at San Francisco who served as director of the National Center for Health Statistics from 1976 to 1982.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4193636/

More than 70 percent of the population had some form of hospital insurance by 1965 (though less than one-half of the elderly population did), 67 percent had surgical insurance, and there was a growing market for major medical insurance (Health Insurance Institute, 1980). But few were insured for primary or out-of-hospital care. Of the members of the general population who reported they had “pains in the heart,” 25 percent did not see a physician (Andersen and Anderson, 1967).


The elderly were particularly hard hit. The classic example of the proposed Medicare beneficiary was the elderly school-teacher, blameless after a career of work. “I am one of your old retired teachers that has been forgotten,” went one story in congressional hearings in 1959:


I am 80 years old and for 10 years I have been living on a bare nothing, two meals a day, one egg, a soup, because I want to be independent.


I am of Scotch ancestry, my father fought in the Civil War to the end of the war, therefore, I have it in my blood to be independent and my dignity would not let me go down and be on welfare.


And I worked so hard that I have pernicious anemia, $9.95 for a little bottle of liquid for shots, wholesale, I couldn't pay for it (Subcommittee on Problems of the Aged and Aging of the Committee of Labor and Public Welfare, 1959; Corning, 1969).

Yet, as sociologist Michael Harrington (1962) demonstrated eloquently in his own best-seller in 1962, the highest mass standard of living in the world was definitely not shared by all. There was “another America”: 40 to 50 million citizens who were poor, who lacked adequate medical care, and who were “socially invisible” to the majority of the population. Within this poverty-stricken group were more than 8 million of the 18 million Americans who were 65 years of age and over, suffering from a “downward spiral” of sickness and isolation. And although there were half a million Americans in nursing homes, less than 60 percent of the homes were considered acceptable (Harrington, 1962). Medicare was formed in a society with idealistic expectations of wealth for all—at least for all of those who “deserved” it—yet increasingly isolated its minorities and its poor.

 

And yet the people of Norway are much more satisfied with life than Americans are.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisfaction_with_Life_Index

They also beat us in the Quality if Life Index: https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.jsp

 

So I just posted facts that prove you wrong and you repeat the same nonsense. Wow, I guess the millions of corpses produced by Socialists in the last century are not enough.....

Do we really have to keep repeating the same failed marxist experiment over and over?

 

Not one word of that is true. That's why you couldn't post any supportive links. You're spewing a right wing series of BS talking points.

 

US is pretty much the most capitalist nation on earth. We don't provide nearly the amount of social benefits that other countries do, so by definition if you find yourself unemployed here, you will have a hard life. If you don't work, there's nothing as of this welfare that we have that will help you to move in upward mobility and out of the current financial situation you are in. Half of workers in this country make 30,000 or less. This is precisely what keeps people working, because they know that if they don't work, hard times will come. But you see, if you are stuck in a situation where even though you do work, two, three jobs and still find yourself struggling to afford healthcare and education.... there is nothing anyone can do for you.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018...-50-all-american-workers-make-less-30533-year

40% of American's can't even afford basic needs. https://www.usnews.com/news/politic...t-of-americans-struggle-to-afford-basic-needs

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/4...d-like-food-housing-or-health-care-2018-08-28

 

No. There's no intention of repeating them.

 

lmao I just debunked your right wing fallacy, but when in doubt Venezuela, or wait marxism, communism! lol dude please these smears and right wing buzz words are so outdated and prove nothing. You simply don't believe the fact that social democracy isn't socialism.

 

Crap? Let's see who is full of crap. Tell me how S.S. is an expense to your tax dollars. Tax in terms of FICA? Yes. IOW it's fully paid for by those who benefit from it. Tax in terms of general taxpayer revenue? No.