And They're Off! The Democratic Candidates for 2020

[Karl Henning]

The quick take from last night seems to be: good performances by the B's (Biden & Buttigieg) so there may be hope for a centrist nominee, after all.

[Harry]

I just hope that the American people have sense enough not the elect Trump for the second time. In Europe we are utterly amazed about the fact that he was at all elected as the president. He is seen as re creating the cold war, lying through his teeth about everything, cheating his way to the top. And much more.
Actually we would put him away somewhere in an old dungeon, and forget about him.

[Karl Henning]

Here's hoping, mijn goede vriend!

[71 dB]

The quick take from last night seems to be: good performances by the B's (Biden & Buttigieg) so there may be hope for a centrist nominee, after all.

Centrists are the reason why we have Trump. Why vote someone who tells people what they can't have (even thou many if not all other developped countries have have those things for decades) ? Biden is offering nostalgy of Obama years (with a twist of mental decline). Buttigieg offers nothing except clever word salad. He just wants to be the president and says whatever he thinks helps him to get to the White House.

Bernie Sanders offers medicate for all, free college, living wage, higher taxes to ultrarich etc.
Elizabeth Warren offers regulation of banks and some sort of healthcare reform (not as good as Bernie)
Andrew Yang offers UBI and a vision of how to handle the problems of automation in the future.
Tulsi Gabbard offers end of costly and deadly interventionism.

Those are the candidates who offer something. The corporates (centrists) offer nothing except status quo for the rich. Why are you excited about that Karl? Is your net worth $50+ million? Haven't you seen how this has led to Trump? The Democrats lost over 1000 seats under Obama's presidency. Centrism clearly didn't work. Going further right didn't help. The answer is going left. You have to give people a reason to vote for you whether it's medicare for all, bank regulation, UBI or ending the unnecessory wars to save lives and money.

[JBS]

Centrists are the reason why we have Trump. Why vote someone who tells people what they can't have (even thou many if not all other developped countries have have those things for decades) ? Biden is offering nostalgy of Obama years (with a twist of mental decline). Buttigieg offers nothing except clever word salad. He just wants to be the president and says whatever he thinks helps him to get to the White House.

Bernie Sanders offers medicate for all, free college, living wage, higher taxes to ultrarich etc.
Elizabeth Warren offers regulation of banks and some sort of healthcare reform (not as good as Bernie)
Andrew Yang offers UBI and a vision of how to handle the problems of automation in the future.
Tulsi Gabbard offers end of costly and deadly interventionism.

Those are the candidates who offer something. The corporates (centrists) offer nothing except status quo for the rich. Why are you excited about that Karl? Is your net worth $50+ million? Haven't you seen how this has led to Trump? The Democrats lost over 1000 seats under Obama's presidency. Centrism clearly didn't work. Going further right didn't help. The answer is going left. You have to give people a reason to vote for you whether it's medicare for all, bank regulation, UBI or ending the unnecessory wars to save lives and money.

Pujo, go outside (at this time of year, in suitably warm clothes, of course), and look to your west. 135 miles or so to your west. You will see a country which spent most of the 20th century proving that leftism doesn't work. They had all the things you want us to have. Yet, strangely, everyone ended up either dead or thoroughly miserable.

[JBS]

BTW, about Tulsi
https://hotair.com/archives/allahpundit/2019/12/19/sent-lead-aoc-jabs-tulsi-gabbard-voting-present-impeachment/

[71 dB]

Pujo, go outside (at this time of year, in suitably warm clothes, of course), and look to your west. 135 miles or so to your west. You will see a country which spent most of the 20th century proving that leftism doesn't work. They had all the things you want us to have. Yet, strangely, everyone ended up either dead or thoroughly miserable.

The country you are talking about adopted capitalism some 30 years ago. How well are they doing? The things Bernie talks about are normal in Nordic countries and if you Google how Nordic countries are doing it's not that bad, certainly in many ways better than the US.

It' not a black and white thing. Have capitalism do what it does best (e.g. smartphones and cars) and socialism what it does best (e.g. healthcare and education) and also well functioning democracy and the results are good. Bernie isn't extending leftism to everything, just where it makes sense and work better.

[JBS]

The country you are talking about adopted capitalism some 30 years ago. How well are they doing? The things Bernie talks about are normal in Nordic countries and if you Google how Nordic countries are doing it's not that bad, certainly in many ways better than the US.

It' not a black and white thing. Have capitalism do what it does best (e.g. smartphones and cars) and socialism what it does best (e.g. healthcare and education) and also well functioning democracy and the results are good. Bernie isn't extending leftism to everything, just where it makes sense and work better.

Russia abandoned socialism because socialism wasn't working. They didn't convert to capitalism. They converted to cronyism.

I'll be not flippant here...you haven't comprehend the basic principle of American conservatism
Government is a necessary evil. Therefore, in those areas where government is not necessary, get rid of it.

Healthcare and education are a mess in the United States. The main reason they are a mess is because for the last several decades government has been heavily involved in them. So the progressive "solutions" boil down to forcing the victim of poison to ingest even more poison.

[North Star]

Pujo, go outside (at this time of year, in suitably warm clothes, of course), and look to your west. 135 miles or so to your west. You will see a country which spent most of the 20th century proving that leftism doesn't work. They had all the things you want us to have. Yet, strangely, everyone ended up either dead or thoroughly miserable.

Those poor Swedish people...

[JBS]

Those poor Swedish people...

Aargh!

I meant 135 miles east.
My apologies to any and all Swedes who might be reading this.

[North Star]

Pujo, go outside (at this time of year, in suitably warm clothes, of course), and look to your west. 135 miles or so to your west. You will see a country which spent most of the 20th century proving that leftism doesn't work. They had all the things you want us to have. Yet, strangely, everyone ended up either dead or thoroughly miserable.

Aargh!

I meant 135 miles east.
My apologies to any and all Swedes who might be reading this.

Ironically enough, Sweden did, and still does, indeed have all those things Poju wishes that the US would have too..

This recent opinion piece in the NY Times seems germane to the discussion.
Finland Is a Capitalist Paradise
Can high taxes be good for business? You bet.

[JBS]

Ironically enough, Sweden did, and still does, indeed have all those things Poju wishes that the US would have too..

This recent opinion piece in the NY Times seems germane to the discussion.
Finland Is a Capitalist Paradise
Can high taxes be good for business? You bet.

Thanks for that. The column does omit mention of one very important fact: Finland is by US standards a small country. More people live in Nrw York City than in the entire country of Finland, by a considerable amount (6.5 million Finns vs 8.6 million New Yorkers). MIchael Bloomberg was mayor of a city bigger than Finland. (There seem to be at least 30 US cities larger than Helsinki.) Four US states--Alaska, Texas, California, Montana--have larger land areas than Finland. Economies of scale in delivering services are therefore much easier to accomplish in Finland.

Finland of course does not have the military expenditures the US had, but of course the obvious answer there is that the US shouldn't be spending what it spends on military.

But there is one thing that helps the conservative argument. Almost all the problems  Pujo mentions--the price of college, health care, education--can be traced rather directly to earlier attempts to use government to make those things cheap, if not absolutely free. It's government involvement which made them expensive.

[greg]

Government is a necessary evil. Therefore, in those areas where government is not necessary, get rid of it.

That's  the correct approach. Make it a last resort.

[Madiel]

Thanks for that. The column does omit mention of one very important fact: Finland is by US standards a small country.

No American has ever convincingly explained to me why that fact is so important. Apart from as some kind of excuse.

Especially not when you frequently operate as 50 separate small countries anyway. You shouldn't, but you do. Or you go even further and make it about counties and cities that all behave as their own tiny entities.

I mean, your "economies of scale" argument makes zero sense. You're a bigger country? Then YOU can achieve bigger economies of scale. Land area is rarely anywhere near as relevant as the size of the market in population terms.

And if you want to talk a sparse, spread out population, then Australia utterly has you beat. We have less than 10% of your population, in a space about the same size as the 48.

If any of those factors about the USA are actually a problem, then with all the bright minds and vast resources you have you ought to be bloody well able to solve the problem. The fact that you don't has nothing to do with the physical factors that you cite and everything to do with an ideological unwillingness to solve them.

Including your iron-clad belief that government creates problems. There's nothing inherent in that association, because there are plenty of counterexamples. But Americans have a persistent, sometimes pathological fear of "The Government" and would rather wreck any chance of government functioning properly than have it work properly.

You fragment governance into thousands of tiny pieces, and then wonder why it never manages to achieve anything. Try breaking up a large corporation into thousands of little units that aren't allowed to co-ordinate and see how that works. You have profoundly corrupt electoral systems where the people who are going to participate get to set the gerrymanders, and then wonder why there's a lack of accountability.

There's nothing inherently evil about government. It's just that most of you have only ever seen incredibly shit versions of it.

[André]

I agree with all of Madiel's points.  A  'circle the wagons', isolationist mentality with not a little bit of paranoïa is never far from the surface in US minds. It defies understanding that such an advanced country, with more Nobel prizes and great universities than anywhere in the world feels so suspicious of its own institutions.

[JBS]

No American has ever convincingly explained to me why that fact is so important. Apart from as some kind of excuse.

Especially not when you frequently operate as 50 separate small countries anyway. You shouldn't, but you do. Or you go even further and make it about counties and cities that all behave as their own tiny entities.

I mean, your "economies of scale" argument makes zero sense. You're a bigger country? Then YOU can achieve bigger economies of scale. Land area is rarely anywhere near as relevant as the size of the market in population terms.

And if you want to talk a sparse, spread out population, then Australia utterly has you beat. We have less than 10% of your population, in a space about the same size as the 48.

If any of those factors about the USA are actually a problem, then with all the bright minds and vast resources you have you ought to be bloody well able to solve the problem. The fact that you don't has nothing to do with the physical factors that you cite and everything to do with an ideological unwillingness to solve them.

Including your iron-clad belief that government creates problems. There's nothing inherent in that association, because there are plenty of counterexamples. But Americans have a persistent, sometimes pathological fear of "The Government" and would rather wreck any chance of government functioning properly than have it work properly.

You fragment governance into thousands of tiny pieces, and then wonder why it never manages to achieve anything. Try breaking up a large corporation into thousands of little units that aren't allowed to co-ordinate and see how that works. You have profoundly corrupt electoral systems where the people who are going to participate get to set the gerrymanders, and then wonder why there's a lack of accountability.

There's nothing inherently evil about government. It's just that most of you have only ever seen incredibly shit versions of it.

Think of it this way. How far does someone in the Outback need to travel to get medical care? And if they have an illness requiring specialized care, how much further?

And how much more expense, and travel distance, does that person need to go to to get their normal supplies of food, clothing, and shelter  compared to a person in Melbourne?

80 percent of the US population lives in urban areas, a slightly less percentage than that of Australia . But that still leaves 60 million or more people--twice the population of Australia--in rural areas, some of them as sparsely populated as anywhere in Australia.  Making first class health care as readily available to them as any city dweller is not going to happen.

We have all those local governments fragmented and broken up by design. The less power and geographic spread a governmental entity has, the better.  Government is sometimes good...but generally speaking, if there is a problem, governmental intrusion makes it worse, and usually there's a nongovernmental solution that works better.

[Jo498]

Well, that's just common sense.

yes, like that the earth clearly cannot be moving, otherwise we would fall off. That's also common sense.

[Todd]

yes, like that the earth clearly cannot be moving, otherwise we would fall off. That's also common sense.

Very odd, your conception of common sense in this instance directly contradicts established scientific fact. 

[drogulus]

Think of it this way. How far does someone in the Outback need to travel to get medical care? And if they have an illness requiring specialized care, how much further?

And how much more expense, and travel distance, does that person need to go to to get their normal supplies of food, clothing, and shelter  compared to a person in Melbourne?

80 percent of the US population lives in urban areas, a slightly less percentage than that of Australia . But that still leaves 60 million or more people--twice the population of Australia--in rural areas, some of them as sparsely populated as anywhere in Australia.  Making first class health care as readily available to them as any city dweller is not going to happen.

We have all those local governments fragmented and broken up by design. The less power and geographic spread a governmental entity has, the better.  Government is sometimes good...but generally speaking, if there is a problem, governmental intrusion makes it worse, and usually there's a nongovernmental solution that works better.

    The expense of health care matters relative to outcomes. If you can cover everyone at a base level for 20% less than another way, it's preferable to do it that way.

    This is almost never the case. The U.S. has worse outcomes that cost more. These are related, both the high cost and lack of coverage come from treating health care as a luxury and not a public good.

    Currency affordability is a dodge, resource affordability is what counts. That's why developed countries have universal health coverage, they have the resources so they see no advantage to running out of money for the use of them. Oddly the U.S. substitutes dollar run outs for resource run outs as though if we decide to run out of one, the abundance of the other disappears, too.

     Not one of the developed countries will cut people off health care if they become 10% less rich. Even from the U.S. perspective we could see that getting money poorer wouldn't cause doctors, nurses and clinics to disappear. In fact, common sense would say that idling resources would make us poorer still.

     Universal coverage makes it possible to lower costs, even while maintaining a role for health care profiteers. With costs better controlled we can strive for better outcomes, something that is extremely difficult with the current patchwork arrangement.

[drogulus]

We have all those local governments fragmented and broken up by design. The less power and geographic spread a governmental entity has, the better.  Government is sometimes good...but generally speaking, if there is a problem, governmental intrusion makes it worse, and usually there's a nongovernmental solution that works better.

     This is theology. Government is the tool for public purposes. It's neither good nor bad in itself. Even when it's the case that government creates problems in the process of solving others, government action is needed, as when damage to the economy from deregulation/recorruption of financial institutions requires the government to right such wrongs. Capitalism is one of the most successful government programs ever implemented. Though it receives more coddling than it needs, it certainly couldn't long survive in a government free environment. Markets as we know them are creatures of the law, as is the national currency.

     Continuous adjustment will always take place. The anti-government priesthood needs government as much as normal people do. How else could they abolish public services and "right wrongs" if they couldn't "intrude"?