> Of course we can afford free health care for our citizens in the US -- but our leadership favors corporate welfare over citizen welfare and that is unfortunate.
I think that's dramatically underselling the American voter's role in all of this. Many, many Americans balk at the prospect of raising taxes to pay for universal healthcare. But those same people shrug indifferently to the enormous costs to sustain the US military and the tremendous costs of campaigns such as Afghanistan.
So yes there is a whole segment of American politicians who are working hard to carve out tax cuts for billionaires while having not a care for the millions without healthcare. But I find that a lot of people are actively opposed to the government 'taking over healthcare' or they're scared of the price tag for universal healthcare. They're part of the reason we don't have it.
>I think that's dramatically underselling the American voter's role in all of this. Many, many Americans balk at the prospect of raising taxes to pay for universal healthcare. But those same people shrug indifferently to the enormous costs to sustain the US military and the tremendous costs of campaigns such as Afghanistan.
I think that's dramatically understating these American voters' role in this and their reaction to anything that can be dubbed "socialism". They happily vote for candidates who push for enormous "corporate welfare" to defense contractors, and scream bloody murder if anyone suggests using any public money at all to pay for someone else's healthcare.
American voters are getting exactly what they're voting for.
>They're part of the reason we don't have it.
They are the reason we don't have it.
As I frequently like to remind people, every nation gets the government it deserves.
You and the GP can both be right because, arguably, the voters have been given the "choice" of 2 platforms from the 2 dominant parties that share a common pro war-industrial-complex agenda.
I'm not sure that's really case. I find that few people think much more deeply about policy issues than the headlines and zingers from pundits like Shawn Hannity or Rachel Maddow.
We have a serious information problem, or lack thereof.
If people were truly informed on some of the issues, I can't imagine soany issues would be so divisive.
I think setting up some kind of reporting requirents to divorce opinion and pundits from actual journalistic news would be a start.
A perfect example is the turmoil inside the fox news network right now. If you watch the actual newscasters/journalists you will believe the obvious truth that Trump was ordering funds withheld to get negative press for the Democrats and Bidens from Ukraine. (Whether that rises to impeachment level is up for debate and tangential to my point).
If you watch only the fox news pundits (which are most of the primetime lineup) you will believe that it's all totally made up and even that the impeachment process itself is somehow unconstitutional and some sort of coop. Which is just completely divorced from reality.
This same thing plays out everyday on countless issues on both sides and is being controlled by a small handful of powerful people that are manipulating viewers for their own gain.
How often do voters get a real choice rather than two slightly different sides of the same coin?
I seem to remember multiple presidential primaries in the US where progressive candidates get side-lined within the party as either un-electable (long before actually competing at polling stations) or get kicked out due to technicalities meant to steer watered-down right-centrists into the general election.
I'm not talking about some right-wing conspiracy, I'm talking about basic mechanics of the electoral process that are unfair at the party level, in media, etc.
As one example, I might cite how current candidate Andrew Yang barely gets time to speak at debates while others polling at the same level get 2x or 3x as many minutes to speak.
Another example might be the way Bernie Sanders was all but eliminated by backstage machinations in the Democratic party in 2015/2016. How are voters supposed to vote for true progressive candidates who want to change the system in a major way if they cant even compete on an even playing field
>How often do voters get a real choice rather than two slightly different sides of the same coin?
The fact that voters don't have much choice is their own fault. It's their job to reform the system if they don't like it.
>I seem to remember multiple presidential primaries in the US where progressive candidates get side-lined within the party as either un-electable
Again, this is the voters' fault. If they don't like it, they should do more to change it.
>How are voters supposed to vote for true progressive candidates who want to change the system in a major way if they cant even compete on an even playing field
If the citizens of a country don't like the way the elections are run, it's their job to change it, by whatever means are necessary. That is what it means when I say that every nation has the government it deserves. This applies to every nation (except maybe occupied ones), no matter what kind of government it has. The citizens are the ones who ultimately have the power, so if their government sucks, it's their own fault.
I think for a lot of conservatives, more than the cost, is the philosophical question of whether the Fed Govt should be involved in social welfare programs like healthcare. The original role of the Fed Govt was foreign policy and the economy in a republic of strong states. The country is pretty well split between conservatives and progressives and a one size solution for all 50 states is always going to piss off 50% of the country. Why not look to your state for Healthcare? When a Democrat was in the Whitehouse, Texas talked about secession and now that a Republican is in the whitehouse California was talking the same thing. The thing is why does CA evern care about the whitehouse. It's the 5th largest economy in the world. If it wants healthcare for it's people then go right ahead and leave the rest of us out of it. Massachusetts offered healthcare to it's citizens under Romney before Obamacare and people who were opposed to that in MA were free to cross the border into NH, a libertarian state.
I think for some conservatives it's about the philosophical question of the Fed Gov't should actually be doing. But IIRC most are supportive of Medicare/Medicaid so they're not totally against government run healthcare.
I find that Libertarian leaning people definitely look at the universal healthcare as something that shouldn't be a public good.
Each state could make its own laws and to that point I think some will make some movement on that front if universal healthcare efforts falter.
Ha! States have been eroding local ability to make local efforts (our state minimum wage forbids counties/municipalities from choosing any other); feds have been eroding States rights to choose. All this under a party that pretends to support local small government. Of course they panic when that local small government tries something that they don't like, so they squash it.
Trump is the second US president in a roll that won promissing he would reduce the military actions, with an opposition saying they would do the opposite.
I don't know much important it was, I also don't don't if he or Obama fulfiled the promise to any degree. But it was there.
I think that's dramatically underselling the American voter's role in all of this. Many, many Americans balk at the prospect of raising taxes to pay for universal healthcare. But those same people shrug indifferently to the enormous costs to sustain the US military and the tremendous costs of campaigns such as Afghanistan.
So yes there is a whole segment of American politicians who are working hard to carve out tax cuts for billionaires while having not a care for the millions without healthcare. But I find that a lot of people are actively opposed to the government 'taking over healthcare' or they're scared of the price tag for universal healthcare. They're part of the reason we don't have it.
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