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U.S Presidential Election
- Thread starter Chiang Mai Tiger
- Start date
You would hope all media outlets would question all politicians.
Unfortunately they is a section of the media thst has become a cheersquad for conservative parties, both here and the US.
Some consider much mainstream media 'left-wing' but none of that 'left wing' mainstream media supports the left wing political parties.
You must be having a laugh because you can't be that deluded.
You mean Trump is a bare-faced liar, yep, seems reasonable.
What is Bernie proposing, ooh, a national health service like Medicare, which most western countries already have, and we all spend less on health care than the US and get better results. Yep, it'll destroy the place
Bernie might call himself a socialist, and the far right might actually believe this, but any sensible person knows he is slightly left. Would not be called a socialist anywhere else in the world. Haven't heard a lot from Bernie about socialising the means of production, that's socialism. Government involvement in a market economy, that's capitalism, always has been, always will be. Without government guaranteeing contracts and private property capitalism doesn't work, you need coercive enforcement in a market system or it just don't work. Capitalist systems also need government to make up for market failures, just see the GFC, great depression etc if you want some (real world, not theoretical) examples.
DS
Bernard is far, far left. You may just be the only person on the planet who doesn’t know it.
Staggering that people are willing to put faith in this crack pot.
www.theguardian.com
Trump calls coronavirus criticism Democrats' 'new hoax' and links it to immigration
The president was in South Carolina where he falsely called ‘the Democrat policy of open borders’ a threat to Americans’ health
What sort of spin will Trump put on the peace deal with the Taliban. He has increased US troops numbers into Afghanistan and with the peace deal he will pull some troops out of there, but the remaining troops will be about the same as when he came to power.
No doubt he’ll talk about how he has brought peace to Afghanistan.
No doubt he’ll talk about how he has brought peace to Afghanistan.
That's nonsense, he's a run of the mill Scandinavian model proponent. He supports
- increasing the minimum wage to $16ph. This in a country where real wages have not increased since the 70s. Hardly radical.
- tax - he wants companies like hedge funds and big corporates to pay tax
- spend more money on infrastructure
- trade - somewhat protectionist. A BIT LIKE TRUMP
- he does have an environment policy - admittedly this means he's part of the illuminati global cabal to steal everyone's money through fake climate science
- anti-surveillance - libertarians would agree
- pro-education and pro-universal health care - a bit like we have in australia.
To call him "hard left" is fatuous. No-one would bat an eye at these policies in Austraia or most other western democracies, even if you don't agree with them.
To be honest, he swings much further than we do in both of these areas.
Bernies universal healthcare heads too far to the left. He in essence includes even more things that the NHS does in the UK free of charge. The US healthcare system IMO is a disaster an needs a big change but Bernie goes too far. The other democratic candidates have systems similar to Australia, Bernie keeps going on.
Similar to university education. The real issue in the US is the price of university education is very different to elsewhere in the world (despite their college system not being as good). IMO if you go to university (and I have) then I have no problem paying for it, for 2 reasons.
1 - The expectation is that when you come out of uni with a degree you should get a better paying job, why should you not have to pay for that?
2 - Even when I went to uni in the early 2000's (I went in the UK), there were still people that went to uni because "they didn't know what to do and just thought they'd go to uni, get drunk for a year or so and then figure it out". If uni education is free, the number of people that do this will grow exponentially impacting the number of people in uni and causing disruption to those that actually want to learn.
My personal viewpoint is that healthcare is a right and therefore agree some changes are needed, but that doesn't mean a system where everything is free. Ie. Bernie wants to include all dental / eyecare etc too, I also think education is a right, but that is up until uni. I'm happy for their to be grants for low income families, but those that can afford uni should have to pay for it.
I've lived in both the UK and Australia, the uni system is similar in both (tuition fees / student loans / Hecs etc) and the healthcare IMO is the most balanced in Australia.
These are why I favour a more centrist candidate than Bernie. Clearly he's not as left wing as someone like crazy Corbyn but he's not a centrist candidate.
Beat me to it, only the far right could call Bernie far left.
Mr Poshman, you do realise that eye tests are free here, that higher education was free here from 1975 to 1988 and that prior to 1975 well over 60% of students did not pay fees (lots of scholarships). We can disagree on this but I support free education at all levels (still free for the vast majority of local students doing a higher degree by research by the way).
But what is even more interesting is compare these policies to what was common back in, say, the 1970s (you know, back when we were not as wealthy as we are now on a real per capita basis if we don't account for widening inequality since). The original Medibank scheme (1975) was supposed to include dental, but they couldn't get it through. Tax rates were much higher. Infrastructure was built by governments, not contracted out to subsidise private industry. Trade was more protectionist. Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House. Surveillance? Geez, the old Stasi agents must be jealous of the surveillance by governments and private companies in the "free west" are now able to get away with (the right love surveillance). Bernie would look centerist if you go back a few decades.
The agenda has shifted so far to the right it just isn't funny. Bernie ain't no socialist, he'd be pushing to be a Keynesian, and before some nutty right winger makes the claim: no Keynes was in no way shape or form a socialist.
Socialism is about socialisation of the means of production, ie: everybody owns them. Some socialists saw this is government control of the means of production but really that was governmentalism. Still, that's what happened when socialists seized power so no reason to trust they're any better than anyone else. Bernie is not proposing mass nationalisation or anything like it, he is not a socialist. Even Corbyn only wanted to renationalise things like the railways which were publicly owned years ago, and that wasn't socialism, it was just seen as a natural monopoly so should be in government hands in a capitalist society.
If you want to call someone a socialist you should actually have some understanding of what socialists are on about. Might be useful to know what distinguishes capitalism too while you're at it. Claiming that someone who wants a more interventionist government in a capitalist system is a socialist makes it easy to throw "socialist" around as an insult, but to anyone who actually knows anything about this it just looks silly.
DS
I take it you're less worried about coronavirus now that Trump has called it a democrat hoax caused by immigration?
I don't know why we're bothering with vaccine's. We should just build a virus fence.
But then again, he might just be a little fast and loose with the facts. We all get the meaning. The coronavirus is a left wing conspiracy caused by Mexicans.
If you sit at the far right, then the centre is far to your left.
Why do you believe health care and education before uni to be a right postman?
Sanders is far far left. But that's only because there's been a real shift to the right globally
You do realise that was a satirical piece? Or are you so far gone that you can't even see that anymore?
You do realise that was a satirical piece? Or are you so far gone that you can't even see that anymore?
