191–200 of 278 posts
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It all comes down to our "freedom" fetish. Why should the government force me to take 4 weeks of vacation when I can make due with 2? Why would I want to build my day around a train schedule when I could just get in my car and drive? And so on.
If this would prevent my employer from rewarding me for only taking two weeks of vacation, I would argue that it'd be unconstitutional.
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You are asking me to defend a point that I disagree with, but as the argument goes, you pay for them regardless. Because these type of things are provided for the government, it means they are funded by tax dollars. I am therefore in a way participating in them because I have to pay for them. If I don't want 4 weeks of vacation, why should I pay for everyone else to get 4 weeks of vacation?
> If I don't want 4 weeks of vacation, why should I pay for everyone else to get 4 weeks of vacation? You want to pay for things like that because it makes your society stronger and healthier overall. You already pay for everyone to use the police, jails, firemen, roads, sidewalks, parks, libraries, courts, etc. etc. even though you probably don't use them, or use them frequently. Why do you pay for other people to u…
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He favors European style social democracy. His whole point is that there actually exist functioning countries where health care is universal and free, college is accessible to all, gay people have rights, etc etc., and that America could be one of those countries if we wanted to. Btw I learned this by spending five minutes last night reading about him and watching a short interview, so I think your comment gives him…
The problem with the U.S. and why universal health care potentially wouldn't work is in terms of scale. The U.S. has over 300M people living in it, over 8x as much as the most populous European country. We also have a history of hating and evading taxes at all costs (Boston Tea Party). I'm not saying it can't work but the economics gets truly tricky when you're dealing with a country that big.
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You are asking me to defend a point that I disagree with, but as the argument goes, you pay for them regardless. Because these type of things are provided for the government, it means they are funded by tax dollars. I am therefore in a way participating in them because I have to pay for them. If I don't want 4 weeks of vacation, why should I pay for everyone else to get 4 weeks of vacation?
> If I don't want 4 weeks of vacation, why should I pay for everyone else to get 4 weeks of vacation? You want to pay for things like that because it makes your society stronger and healthier overall. You already pay for everyone to use the police, jails, firemen, roads, sidewalks, parks, libraries, courts, etc. etc. even though you probably don't use them, or use them frequently. Why do you pay for other people to u…
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That's a ridiculous article. It conveniently avoids overall GDP, by which the US is the richest in the world. In the first comparison they use GDP per capita, and in the second they use overall reserve currency? Then they use natural resources, but don't factor overall ability to exploit said resources. They're just picking metrics that don't favor the US.
But when we're talking about redistribution to individuals, GDP is a less good metric than GDP per capita. I agree that it dances around GDP, but I disagree that it is somehow the trump metric that makes everything work. On balance, we have less cash per resident than do countries with higher per capita GDP.
However, those nine countries have a few million people each, so the US has more money per person than 99% of the world.
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As someone who was born in Australia and now lives in Amsterdam I feel like he's the most sane politician in America. I still don't understand why Americans are so insistent on keeping their "Bad for the people, good for business" policies. If you're in the 1% sure that makes sense, but for everyone else life is so much nicer with free healthcare, good vacation time, maternity leave, good public transport, proper pri…
A lot of my bulgarian friends, and others, living here in America are thinking that taxes, free schools, even police, firefighting, etc. are just things that should go away. Essentially you have to pay, and be a "share-holder" in everything. You should be on top of things everywhere, etc. etc. And someone recently posted this on his fb page: "If a businessman makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences. If a bureauc…
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For the barackobama.com 404 page I got a message that said "Sorry, we couldn't fetch that page for you." and a gif of some dogs chasing after a ball.
There's a "Thanks, Obama" gif towards the bottom. I missed it at first too.
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Could you unfold that statement?
If Sanders is up against Cruz, and Trump is a 3rd party candidate, it's unclear who'd win.
Sorry if "unfold" wasn't used correctly.
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Right, because calling Mexican immigrants to the United States "criminals, drug dealers, rapists" is a completely reasonable position. I'm sure that many of the 100+ million people in the United States that are non-white would definitely agree with that. http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trumps-epic-statement-...
A lot of them do. And the white majority doesn't find the discussion around that point unreasonable. Like I said, you're just out of touch.
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He's an interesting candidate. From what I've seen he's not your typical politician, and he seems to mesh well with the current twentysomething crowd despite being from the tail end of the "Greatest Generation" himself. I don't know how much of a chance he has to win the presidency, but I can say that I like him much, much better than any other candidate (and I'm not a political kind of guy).
Are you comfortable with a socialist leading a capitalist society? I sure am not.
All of them were socialists who lead a capitalist society.
What makes you uncomfortable about them or their leadership?