US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3385

On March 18 2016 08:17 Sermokala wrote:

Yeah what difference does it make that she lost an ambassador and his staff and failed to prevent their bodeis from being dragged in the street.

On March 18 2016 08:19 Atreides wrote:


Hmm? If you mean that the ACA has broken the system so much that even it admits I can't afford insurance so I guess I don't have to pay penalty. I'm still uninsured and get no benefits from it at all.

I think that there is literally not one single person in this thread who buys their own insurance. Lol. Everyone is so clueless. Pre ACA I could choose from a host of providers and get good insurance for ~118$ a month. Now there is literally one provider period who will sell insurance to anyone from my entire state and it is over 3x as expensive. I know MANY people who bought their own insurance pre ACA who are now in religious medi-share programs because they can't afford insurance. Great stuff.

Btw I'm pretty far right on a lot of issues obviously but this healthcare shit is ridiculous. Just go to a single payer "socialist" equal for all with reasonably high deductible. At least then the people funding the whole system actually get insured by it.

On March 18 2016 08:14 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:

So what does USSR stand for
"The goal of socialism is communism" - V.Lenin

On March 18 2016 08:43 Sermokala wrote:
Whats a desernable difference between socialists and communists in your opinion?

On March 18 2016 08:32 Nebuchad wrote:


I'm a socialist in Europe. Everyone in my country (Switzerland) agrees that my positions define me clearly as a socialist. The people I vote for, in the socialist party, represent my position accurately, and advocate to vote on issues in the same way I do a large majority of the time. I don't want communism, and neither do they. The communist party of my country was created by people who were expelled from the socialist party because their views were too left wing.

Need I add more?

On March 18 2016 08:28 zlefin wrote:


I buy my own health insurance.
If the prices went up that much; it was either because those policies were worthless trash; or because the costs are now covering people who didn't have insurance before.
Single payer would indeed make more sense than the ACA. I'd be fine with just putting that in. And aca hasn't broken the system that much, the system was already working poorly, it just shuffled a few things around about where it works poorly.

On March 18 2016 08:43 Sermokala wrote:
Whats a desernable difference between socialists and communists in your opinion?

On March 18 2016 08:49 ticklishmusic wrote:
Well that explains a lot about your opinions. What might be a viable political/ policy position in Europe is off the scale in the US.

On March 18 2016 09:00 Atreides wrote:


So this is basically the first good post I've seen on health insurance in this thread.

The reason for the huge price hike is because of the ability to segregate and discriminate against a population by states line. There is a reason that is in most platforms on reforming the ACA.

It is also true that the ACA mostly just moved problems around. I agree with that assessment. The funny thing is the issue everyone talks about. The nominal "poor people dieing in the streets" demagoguery, is something that the ACA didn't even change. People who qualify for Medicare now, did before also.

About the only purpose I can see of it is to attempt to create a 100% insured population. Which regardless of whether you thing this is the federal governments job or not, there are arguments both for and against it, the ACA kind of fails to do.

The world I live in has a lot of self-employed people who would need to buy their own insurance. I am not unique in the slightest. Many of my friends/family are in same spot. I know of almost no cases where people previously were uninsured and they are insured now. A few, but I don't think the ACA really gets credit for it. Either they are uninsured and get royally pissed about the penalty, uninsured but don't get penalized, or joined a religious medi-share group to exempt themselves from penalty. That's why I say the ACA is broken.

There is an explosion in popularity of these religious medi share programs and I am not really convinced it's a good thing.

On March 18 2016 09:04 Nebuchad wrote:


Simply put, radicalism. I don't want the system overthrown to institute a communist system instead of what we have, and I would fight against that happening. I'm "working" (I'm not super active, I vote and sometimes I debate on the web like I'm doing now but I'm not super engaged) within the system as a voice on the left, but I think it's more important to be moderate than it is to be left or right wing. I think being moderate and being balanced is what's best for a society, more than being left or right wing. I think the US society is imbalanced (and I think it's just a fact as opposed to my opinion), which is why I would advocate for someone like Sanders. If people like Sanders were in power for so long that the perceived center was then between Sanders and a communist, then I would think it's time for a moderate right wing person to become president.



You say this as if we hadn't talked about this before. The US scale could be normalized, and my argument would be that it should be. I don't like the fact that every four years I have to worry about an extremist getting power in the biggest country in the world because your center is so far off that you consider democratic socialism to be extreme as opposed to republicans. You spoke against that change, which tells me that you're a moderate right wing person (on the world scale). All right.

On March 18 2016 08:24 kwizach wrote:

Is this the point where "Thanks, Obama" becomes "Thanks, Hillary"?

On March 18 2016 09:43 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:


I thought socialism is an economic policy, whereas communism is a political one?

On March 18 2016 09:51 Lord Tolkien wrote:

...wat.

Neither communism nor socialism (nebulous terms that they are) can be solely described as a political or an economic theory: Marx is the father of political economy after all, and was insistent that you cannot separate politics from economics, because economic systems have inherently political outcomes and impacts; the ideologies that followed him share in this structural theory of the deep inter-connection of the economy and politics.

It should be noted by all theoretical terms, Bernie Sanders is assuredly not a socialist. A social democrat perhaps, but not a socialist.

I'm about to go to sleep, but I'll elaborate in my next post as to a more proper definition of the two

On March 18 2016 10:01 SK.Testie wrote:
Know who else was a social-democrat? The Bolsheviks.
Socialism is just the precursor. Small Scandinavian countries made it work for a while until they didn't incentivize their own population growth and now it's under great strain and burden by illiterate migrants. Their foolish altruism and naiveté has doomed them unless they all get sick of the cold and go home.

Sneaky rat bolsheviks promise you the world and sneak in with "democratic-socialism". Not until we have Star Trek replicators you dirty commies. Stop cleaning up the image of what you want.

That Trump rally @ Chicago. Death threats and rampant hooliganism. Dirty communists below.
+ Show Spoiler +

On March 18 2016 09:51 Lord Tolkien wrote:

...wat.

It should be noted by all theoretical terms, Bernie Sanders is assuredly not a socialist. A social democrat perhaps, but not a socialist.