The Politics Thread (PLAY NICELY!)

It always has to end with references to failed states run by criminals or involved in wars on the loosing end, doesn't it?

I doubt anybody here defends such situations. We're talking of the healthy amount of "socialism" that you can find in various successful first world states. Public health care, free university, etc.

Things that work here that certain radicals in the US somehow like to put in line with failed states.
Apples and Oranges. Really.

Also I started watching those comedians only with the rise of Donald Trump, long after my political views had been formed.
Mainly I don't even watch the stuff if it isn't related to the Trump situation. But Trump is just too ... interesting not to watch. It's like a house on fire. Except the house is white and in Washington. You can't look away. What is going on in US politics at this point is more interesting than house of cards.

well call me old fashioned but I don't like the idea of the government forcing me to pay for other peoples societal needs just so some wacky lefties can feel good about themselves. In my mind when a politician starts offering free stuff that's him admitting that he will have to forcefully take stuff from people who earned it. People like trump because he talks about wealth creation not redistribution of taxed wealth by force to further the liberal dystopia.

couldn't have put it better than cola.

what, I suddenly start watching trump bashes at 27 years old not out of free will when I never did before and never really cared for them and they still aren't really my thing, and now I've basically stopped? /S makes sense to pin that on brainwashing. /S

maybe I already had a well formed idea of who I liked and didn't like in the election and there were many Trump-fueled incentives to follow what he does, no? is that really to hard to admit?

I mean fuckk, the proof of that is the start of this very thread. I already stated my motives right at the start of it and back then last week tonight didn't even fuckking exist!

also yeah you sound like a lunatic when you talk about socialism. had you no clue that france, germany, spain switzerland, belgium, denmark, norway, sweeden, canada ect... are socialist? or you know but choose to pretend these countries don't exist in your explanation of socialism? these are the only two possibilities with what you've said and I bet even you will concur... they're nuts.

please speak with a little more context.

you'd love to be the final word on what we get to call the totalitarian regimes you mention but the millions of people who lived their LIVES under these have their own differing say on the matter and I'm afraid their word outweighs one lone keyboard warrioring american.

those countries all started off as capitalist and are stable because of well educated populations...im a south African BTW why the **** would you open a thread only to call people who oppose your ideas keyboard warriors...obviously reasonable debate is beyond you because you feel the need too attack the people opposing your silly ideas and not the ideas themselves....you probably come from a 1st world nation and have absolutely no concept of what it means to live in a 3rd world nation with 10X more poor people then there are middle class...I would like to see you implement scandanavian style mixed democratic socialism in.....lets say the Congo?

I'm the keyboard warrior and you're not....with your 12000 messages lol the level of self awareness is mind blowing

If you pay taxes, then you already do. I for one like well-maintained roads and reasonably priced healthcare.

But more practically, Capitalism like this isn't sustainable. We're already stretching the limits on what we can farm and mine, and it'll only get worse when the billion chinese and indians want to live like us. We throw tons of food away, we throw literal oceans of plastic away, because our entire economic model is built on infinite growth, yet our world is finite.

Capitalism has led to technology being designed to fail. We spend billions to convince people to buy the newest stuff and throw out anything less than optimal. We barely bother repairing anymore, if the smallest thing breaks we rip out the entire thing and install a new one, because it's cheaper to replace things than to repair.

It doesn't require a genius to see that the western way of life, is simply not sustainable, and the worst thing that can possibly happen in the next 20 years is 2 billion chinese and indians trying to copy that. We waste tons of resources on food we don't eat, cars we don't sell, and stuff we don't repair, because it's cheaper to do that than to be responsible.

what?

I think he means these countries did at some point in time had more capitalism and less socialism and he has a point. We didn't form over night. However in Germany socialistic ideas began to be implemented in the 1880s.
Basically it became clear that capitalism screws over the weak and the weak had to be appeased. Apparently back then the rich did not manage to brainwash the weak into a "we are all just temporarily embarassed millioneres" stance of mind. Unlike the quite successfully did in the US over the last few decades.

You sure do need a working economic backbone. Capitalism is a great thing for that. It's just not without downside.
Part of the reason why many poor countries are poor however is because they've been screwed with for a long long time by capitalism driven greed of people from other countries.
If you don't even care that your neigbor has access to healthcare you probably don't care your phone was made by Chinese workers working 12 hour shifts with gold mined by a child somewhere in Africa.

But why do you make the line were you do?
What about fire departments? "Sorry if you can't pay us your house will burn down"
What about the military? "I don't want to pay for a war I don't agree with"
Police? Roads? Basic education?

... so many things everyone in a society needs. Things that we need as a society as a whole should be paid by the society as a whole. And the best thing I am aware of to let the society as a whole pay for something is taxes.

I didn't realize we impeached Obama. /sarcasm

So far, there's more argument to be made of racism toward white presidents, which we've put forth impeachment against 2 of (so far).

Why everyone so racist against whites? I didn't get to choose how I was born, and you go off and attack me like all whites are oppressive automatically. Sounds prejudice. Do I have a case for reporting a user here or what?

You don't want to destroy every incentive to create new things and be successful. HOWEVER, you also don't want only 1 out of every 200 people to have a "valuable" life.

Think of it this way. Without volunteerism or some minimal threshold socialism, those with little to gain and literally nothing to lose, will commit crimes. If 4000 peasants can murder King Louis XVI and take all his property and value, and still each make more than a lifetime salary, then why wouldn't they? They have no chance in life to ever make even remotely that much.

You want volunteerism and socialism to a minimal threshold. You want criminals to have a more valuable opportunity, than crime. Everyone NEEDS food and without food someone's getting shot. Probably your mom, she is probably a vulnerable target walking to her car, you know? Just for her keys, you can chop the car to eat for another week. You want it to be easier to earn an honest living for a person and their family, way easier than it is to kill an easy target to feed their family for a week.

If we made jobs valuable enough, and the minimum subsidized income decent enough, we wouldn't have to "take" very much money from the millionaires, billionaires, and corporations. Nobody would suddenly go from earning millions to "not making enough", but someone would go from "I gotta rob a liquor store" to "I have enough food for my children this week".

It's literally the difference, of a few thousand for those that make below 34 thousand, and a few thousand for those that make over 200 thousand.

In france socialism formed even before that and what there was before could hardly be called "capitalism" by any stretch of the imagination.

If you want to stretch the definitions to that point then it could just as well be said that it was also socialism.

you gotta draw the line somewhere.

and the world isn't just capitalism or socialism. (I'm seeing a trend in binary for viewing the world in reps here... )

and Sweden and Norway????? in the 18th to 19th century??? capitalist????
really ??? is that what BEST applies?

don't give me that

you bloody well tried.

I can play that game too you know :

"didn't realize we impeached Trump. /sarcasm"

Obama, the first black president, was accused of not being american nor christian. Because black people can't be either, apparently.

Hillary was accused of (among others) e-mails and Trump of (among others) collusion. I don't see anyone asking for Trump or Hillary or Bernie's certificates.

Private property is central to capitalism, and private property the way we use it now is a recent invention. What came before was mostly small-scale capitalism, but that's to modern capitalism as apples are to oranges. Industrialization changed it all irreversibly (well, unless you want to go back to a pre-industrial era, and i don't). Just as our interconnected era is destroying previous capitalism. It's easier than ever to play nations against each other to pay no tax, to own large amounts of anything, to be too big to fail and to be outright evil to humans with no repercussions or accountability.

If people in rome had lived like we do now, the impact on the planet would be minimal simply because up to 200 years ago, we were less than a billion people on earth. Since the 1800's we've sevenfolded our population, and it looks to increase by several billion in the current century. This isn't sustainable, we outgrew natural cycles of material and energy long ago.

It's not binary. The following things have been proven to turn out bad: Anarchy, Unregulated Capitalism, Crony Capitalism, Communism, Authoritarian-Socialism.

The broad spectrum in between, requires liberty, and a balance between small and big. You want big to be effective in providing for the small AND innovating and inventing. You want small to be involved in consumerism of products and in workforce participation without discontent. You can't smother the big, and you can't let the working class friggin starve like the filthy plebian hobos that they are.

Anything at the far ends of the spectrum, has led to violent revolution, execution of leaders, genocide of citizens, hostile invasions of other nations, and stagnation of economy and invention. Remember, Soviet Union was a communism, yet Rome was a democracy.

okay this one's going to rub republicans the right way :

it covers the wrongdoings of the left by making an echo-chamber and beating up the right blindly :
I gotta admit it has swayed me a bit.

But does the "liberal" media actually attack Trump voters?
99.9% of the attacks go towards Trump and his republican colleagues, not his voters.
And the .1% remaining are typically extreme Trump zealots that might as well be in the republican party and probably never ever would change their opinion anyway. These are the people that Trump himself references when he said something among the lines of "I could shoot somebody and it would be fine".

Now some voters might feel attacks by attacks targeting Trump, but not pointing out the day to day insanity that is going on under Trump isn't really an option either.

In the end Trump supporters will at some point have to acknowledge they made a mistake. If they cannot do that then they can't really be helped.
All the jokes and attacks about Today-Trump also should be helpful to acknowledge voting Trump a year ago was a mistake.
The stupid things about Trump that only come to light today after all were not involved in the decision to vote Trump.

Lots of new information therefore should make it easy to go "omg Trump didn't follow through on any promises and everything is on fire, I was lied to".

No. Nor is there a "The Left" (or a The Right). People point out genuinely horrible things the president is saying, and it gets taken as "assault". Hell just look at current comedy, it's basically just playing a tape of whatever the **** trump says. Didn't he recently say he tried his hardest to be Kim's friend, despite threatening him and saying diplomacy with NK is useless?

But it doesn't matter because it simply doesn't. They didn't vote for trump, they voted for issues like migration and free trade. And as long as he keeps that fire stoked, he can do anything. Because Hillary didn't say it. If he summons satan, then she would've summoned two. Trump is actually trying his damnedest to start a war, but under Hillary we would've already been in one.

And until he truly backs out of those two basic promises, they'll let him do anything.

oh keystone pipeline broke

fun fun fun.....

Not sure how much of the internet Germany has managed to censor so far so you understandably may not have seen this.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/11/opinion/sunday/interracial-friendship-donald-trump.html

Yeah teach your son to be cautious of the white man only. The rest of humanity are peaceful beings.

I'm still intrigued about where US liberals place the Asians. Is it just one "minority"? Are they with the whites? Man, liberals' racist policy is quite complicated. Latino/hispanic is also difficult, people from Spain and Portugal are we hispanic but not Latino? Do you need American or African "blood" to qualify as Latino?
I understand that it was useful to classify people based on their appearance for police to track them, but they are going too far with this diversity politics. Just don't care about appearance for every opportunity that has nothing to do with personal image and stop this nonsense.