American democracy is broken

Yes, of course that makes no sense.

Which is why I wrote it! We are in a forum where the greater part of Americans have swallowed (hook, line and sinker) the notion that Uncle Sam's is the "greatest nation on earth". And, how should we measure or corroborate that factoid?

What economists have come up with to help understand "economic greatness" is the ability to compare Wealth-after-taxes and where it goes? One of the means for doing that is called the Gini Coefficient that shows that America has the highest value of that particular variable amongst developed economies. (Which is NOT "goodness" since the higher the value the worse is Income Disparity!)

Another has been the work of some people at the UofCal, and they have come up with this graphic:

Now, is there anyone in this Debate Forum who wants to prove sensibly that the above is "pure BS"?

Do come-on ... !

 

B F D!

And so what? Is that all you got for a puny rebuttal ... ?

 

Puerile excuse! Voting is a DUTY in any Real Democracy!

Get it? I doubt you do ...

 

I get your view, and understand why you hold it - but as someone who lives under your perferred system, I respectfully disagree.

 

Then accept the fact that America's problems are unfixable for as long as the present Machiavellian political-system exists. Namely Gerrymandering and an Electoral College that does NOT report election results according to ONLY that of the raw popular-vote ... !

PS: My preferred system, as employed in the EU, demonstrates results showing better outcomes for people's' lives than in the US. Since you are not-interested I will spare you repeating those results.

 

Should citizens have no real say in who occupies the commission? If you are a democrat surely you support making these positions subject to elections, given they write all legislation?

You seem to think I am some adverserial partisan. I am not. Let's have a discussion and leave aside the assumption of bad faith.

 

I am by no means a loser. I think citizens united while legal - should be countered legislatively. Anyone who thinks that special interests on both sides of the isle weigh more heavily than individuals is not a loser. Anyone who supports term limits is not a loser. Anyone who thinks gerrymandering is wrong is not a loser.

 

I think this tuesday in November is stupid, That is a day where most people spend miles distant and 10 of those 12 polling hours at work- WTF, that makes me a loser? When I commuted into the city in the 90s my commute was 2 hours each day and my work day was 9 hours at min. I had a one hour window to vote and caused me to eat at 9:00 PM. I know it is only every two years, but still it is stupid.

 

When I said losers I was talking about the disappointed Crooked Hillary supporters.

All those are legitimate issues named above. Gerrymandering is done in both blue and red states for political advantage. Worse than Gerrymandering is counting non-citizens on the census for purposes of apportionment. Illegal aliens do not need more Democrats in Congress voting for them. Only count AMERICANS!

 

I do. But the mistakes the Dems make is to assume that some aspects of their platform will never get them to win majority elections. Yes, that's a shame, but then they are playing the Replicant game.

There are fundamental principles that any democracy should maintain - not that of simply "low taxation makes for Income Disparity". For instance, Income Disparity means that no national budgetary measures are taken to get people OUT OF THE POVERTY THRESHOLD on one side. And on the other side it means that the DoD budget spends more than half of the Total Discretionary Budget to protect Americans from NO VALID IMMINENT HARM!

These are well-known and fundamental principles of any Advanced Political Thinking

Yes let's ...
___________________________________

 

Having a system in which every vote counts would probably motivate more people to vote. Having more than two "viable" political platforms/parties would be great too.

 

I like two parties, I don't want every election decided by a majority of congressmen, but by the voters themselves.
# or more parties pretty much insure that the 270 is not reached. Congress can not even to decide if a wall is needed, 5 years ago they did, now they don't. The nation has 30 mill without health insurance and the ones that have it pay $15,000 a year for their family. And you want those idiots picking the president?

 

Of course more parties would keep 270 from being reached. Our system is that broken. The end result is that eligible voters are discouraged from voting, because their views aren't represented and they don't like the mere 2 choices they are given.

 

So how does that encourage them to vote, when congress ends up deciding. Like last time, I disliked both candidate equally, If anything I liked trump more than Hilary, but trump just scared me more so I voted for her. I rather I vote for the lesser of two evils than leave it up to congress.

 

THE TWO WRONGS

That should not be the "optional choice" in any Real Democracy.

Voting for the PotUS went wrong from the get-go, when the 12th Amendment established the Electoral College to "get the PotUS vote to Congress". That may have been the solution at a time when America had trails and not roads across its fledgling-nation. (But what it did was to also kindle - at the time - the notion that state-elections to the HofR could be manipulated by Gerrymandering; which started at about the same time in Massachusetts. If one looks at historical accounts.)

The result has been the Two Wrongs of American democracy:
*Five times in history the loser of the popular-vote for the presidency has won the election in which ONLY the winner of the nationwide popular-vote for the presidency should have been sufficient! And,
*At the state level gerrymandering manipulates voting by districts in elections for the HofR. Which does not happen in the Senate because all states vote only for two representatives to Congress.

Two wrongs do not make anything "right". Which is why the rest of the democratic world a the time (meaning generally Europe) - when it changed from a royal-hierarchy to a democracy - did not institute the "American model" to what they called Parliaments.

Nor does an Electoral College manipulate the vote for the Executive Head of any state in America. Only the popular-vote elects state Governors - so why not the PotUS?

Because historically, "it's always been that way"? Which is not a sufficiently good reason.

What's necessary to fix-it? The Electoral College must report ONLY THE POPULAR-VOTE COUNT* to Congress in any presidential election!

My Point: At present, those in any state who voted for the loser of the state presidential vote-tabulation find that their votes are counted as nothing in elections for the presidency! What kind of democracy is that?

 

What "commission" ...?

 

The European Commission.

 

Voting in political elections is not like going to see a basketball game. It is a duty and not only a right.

Do you understand the difference in import between the two words as regards any honestly run democracy ... ?

 

Oh. Yes, quite right.

The Commission however has no law-voting power whatsoever. It's duty/work is in presenting to the combined body of EU-nations (called the EU parliament in Strasbourg) the laws that are adopted by means of a majority parliamentary-vote throughout the EU.

Nobody really thinks this is practical. But the EU is in evolution and for obscure reasons heads-of-government have not accepted the idea of a EU executive voted by the entire EU population. So, it makes do with the Commission in the matter of putting to the EU-parliament the passing of laws.

The process remains "democratic" but the EU parliaments typically vote for laws that the Commission has evolved by intersecting with the heads of governments of the various EU-countries. So, the heads-of-state do have their word to say in the evolution of cross-EU laws.

Is that really any different from the US ... ?

 

Democracy is broken almost everywhere in the world, there is Salvini in Italy, the yellow jackets in France, Brexit in UK, Bolsonaro in Brazil.
Everywhere people don't trust anymore the elites, either the politicians, but it's true for journalists too.

Considering the fundamental role that play medias in a democracy, if you want to fix democracy, you have to fix medias. And honnestly, I don't know the solution for that.

So no, it's not american democracy which is broken, but there is a worldwide crisis of democracy.

Furthermore, beyond the democracy, all the economic system is in crisis. Democracy were born in a context of abundance of ressources (charcoal, oil, iron), and that's not the case anymore. With the explosion of world population, a last ressource tend to be lacking : available lands.
Democracies were born with that economic system and are consubstantial to it.
We already exploited more than the half of oil and coal on earth and the need have exploded with the world population.
Most oil sources of easy access disappeared, and now the sources are hard to access, meaning that getting oil cost more now.
What I mean : the economic crisis will multiply in the future and so the democratic crisis aswell.

For my own country, I would suggest less elections and more random draw for assemblies. I don't think that power should go that much to people which wish for it, as most politician are crazy narcissic/sociopathic manipulator.
By the way, keeping an election for the president is important, but for the assemblies, I don't think so.

 

In the US the people's representatives can originate legislation, they are not held hostage by unaccountable, unelected career bureaucrats.

 

What I hear you saying is "democracy is broken because people I don't like are getting elected."

 

Absolutly not, if I have rather a negative opinion of Trump and Bolsonaro, I don't have a better opinion of their predecessor, if not worse.
I have rather a good opinion of Salvini and I fully support Brexit.

I base myself more on the fact that there is increasing tensions in every country and that apparently people trust less and less their democratically elected leaders.

Some things that make me think that democracy is broken is more the EU, or problems of corruption.

I'm not the hugest fan of democracy, which doesn't mean I support any kind of fascist or tyrannic regime.

I consider that democracy is the reign of narcissic sociopath manipulator, elected by people dominated by herd instinct and "informated" by biased medias. I consider aswell that under I have the proof of the sociopath, that a politician is a kind of prostitute that shouldn't be trusted on any circumstance, even if they're necessary, they're for me among the lowest kind of being.

 

Oh, And how many times does that happen ... ?

 

That's just a passing phenomenon, ater most economic contractions people hope fervently for a political-saviour to put it right. The Germans did that in the 1920s and what we got was WW2!

Nowadays, because anyone who has taken a course in Economics knows that the Demand for goods/services begins (and ends) with Consumers. Until they they want to spend strongly, no "recovery" can happen. If something happens to dissuade them from Consumption then all hell breaks loose. (Which is what happened subsequent to the SubPrime Mess in 2008. It took the US almost 8 years to fully recover economically.)

Well, for the largest population on earth that actually watches the most TV, you can be assured that TV-advertising is as important in convincing people to vote (for an given candidate) as it is for them buying a BigMac.

When they are not confusing the two in comparative importance§

Then it is not really "the same". That is, when Europe became a real democracy and left the prevailing "kingdoms" in the dust, it shopped around for a political system; And the only one at that time at the end of the 19th century was the example of Uncle Sam.

So, they bought the fundamental decision to a separation of powers (between the the Head-of-state and the parliament and the judiciary) to be sacred. All three should balance one another for the common good of the nation (where Federal or state-wise.)

Which would prove to be "Nice in theory, but difficult in execution".

Well, if you cannot agree with my explanations above regarding "Why indeed it IS broken", then let's just drop it.