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The U.S. has ‘worst elections of any long-established democracy,’ report finds

washingtonpost.com

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Re: The U.S. has ‘worst elections of any long-established democracy,’ report finds

#21

Post by mioelnir »

vaadu wrote: post #12
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then there's Bernie who refuses to aknowledge any extremes of socialism. One of these criticisms is not like the others. Sanders is a moderate democratic socialist - in any other industrialized country, he'd be considered mildly left of centre. Let's not equate his slightly out-of-step politics with the actual abuses and mendacities of the other candidates.

Which is why their economies suck. Centralized planning is an utter failure. https://mises.org/blog/if-sweden-and-germany-became-us-state...

Interesting. First that article compares GDP per capita, then explains why it is wrong and adjusts for cost of living. Then it compares those adjusted numbers to the still unadjusted numbers from europe and calls it a day.

This would be a really nice comparison, if the cost of living in any random european country happened to be exactly the median cost of living over all US states. As it stands, that article is prettified data garbage.

Re: The U.S. has ‘worst elections of any long-established democracy,’ report finds

#22

Post by sremani »

woah wrote: post #15
vaadu wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why their economies suck. Centralized planning is an utter failure. https://mises.org/blog/if-sweden-and-germany-became-us-state...

Germany?

Germany, really?! Germany is an export oriented economy (45% of GDP) and had to hold Greece hostage to Euro. If Greeks had drachma, they could have devalued and probably would be able to wrest some industry away from Central and Western Europe.

Germany is a bad bad example, one thing automation will do, is bring back manufacturing locally, since the labor costs will diminish, so export oriented economies like Germany are for misery in next decade.

I would take 'Murican economy over German any time from on set of 1900s to today and way into future.

edit: also Germany 'really' did not pay off money that was injected during Marshall plan.

Re: The U.S. has ‘worst elections of any long-established democracy,’ report finds

#23

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

themartorana wrote: post #7

Gerrymandering has outrageous results [0] and voter suppression of minorities is right out of a novel [1]. It's so screwed up that votes almost don't matter, depending on who last classified what voting district you're in. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/13/this-... [1] http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2016/02/02/3745296/major-vo...

> right out of a novel

Right out of history, that is.

Re: The U.S. has ‘worst elections of any long-established democracy,’ report finds

#24

Post by eli_gottlieb »

lettergram wrote: post #16
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then there's Bernie who refuses to aknowledge any extremes of socialism. One of these criticisms is not like the others. Sanders is a moderate democratic socialist - in any other industrialized country, he'd be considered mildly left of centre. Let's not equate his slightly out-of-step politics with the actual abuses and mendacities of the other candidates.

His economic plan would require all the wealth produced by the top 100 U.S. companies. He also previously and openly called for nationalization of U.S. companies. Oh and if you look at his past votes they're almost all opposite of his campaign. Bernie isn't a moderate (by U.S. standards anyways) he's far left. I'll give it to you Hillery and Trump are also awful, but they are all pretty distasteful.

>He also previously and openly called for nationalization of U.S. companies.

Holy crap, really!? Source, please, I need more reasons to love Bernie.

Re: The U.S. has ‘worst elections of any long-established democracy,’ report finds

#25

Post by exstudent2 »

jdavis703 wrote: post #9
BTinfinity wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with what you say, expect what you say about the tech industry being directly responsible. Could you expand a little more on that? I don't really see the connection between the tech industry and the US electorate..

We've created tools that allow people to become more and more politically polarized along the Republican/Democratic spectrum, and even self radicalized as terrorists. Without stomping on freedom of speech I don't know what we as an industry can do. Are we like gun manufacturers who can simply say "it's not our fault that our tools are used for evil?"

Talk radio and our universities have been doing a much more effective job of this than the tech industry ever could. If anything, tech has created platforms that allow for some questioning of the status quo. Sanders was largely a social media driven phenomena. Same with Trump (who's views I don't agree with). He's at least taking a hammer to the broken and corrupt 2 party system with all their institutionalized backing and coordinated mainstream media messaging.

Re: The U.S. has ‘worst elections of any long-established democracy,’ report finds

#26

Post by LionessLover »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #2

People aren't willing to make their politicians accountable. It's always the other person's fault, the other side's extremes; never their own. You've got Clinton running an email server exposed to the world as secretary of state, ignoring warnings about it and then lying about it. Yet she will probably end up getting elected because it's all a "Republican conspiracy". Meanwhile, Trump is calling a judge's ruling into…

You would be more believable if you had practiced what you preach and picked one of your favorite politicians to criticize, not one from the other side. Seem hypocritical.

Re: The U.S. has ‘worst elections of any long-established democracy,’ report finds

#27

Post by virmundi »

sremani wrote: post #22
woah wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany?

Germany, really?! Germany is an export oriented economy (45% of GDP) and had to hold Greece hostage to Euro. If Greeks had drachma, they could have devalued and probably would be able to wrest some industry away from Central and Western Europe. Germany is a bad bad example, one thing automation will do, is bring back manufacturing locally, since the labor costs will diminish, so export oriented economies like Germany…

Germany finally figured out that European domination didn't require war. Centuries of bloodshed taught them that that it's better to control via politics than the barrel.

Re: The U.S. has ‘worst elections of any long-established democracy,’ report finds

#28

Post by aaron-lebo »

LionessLover wrote: post #26
aaron-lebo wrote: post #2

People aren't willing to make their politicians accountable. It's always the other person's fault, the other side's extremes; never their own. You've got Clinton running an email server exposed to the world as secretary of state, ignoring warnings about it and then lying about it. Yet she will probably end up getting elected because it's all a "Republican conspiracy". Meanwhile, Trump is calling a judge's ruling into…

You would be more believable if you had practiced what you preach and picked one of your favorite politicians to criticize, not one from the other side. Seem hypocritical.

I just criticized Clinton, Trump, Sanders, and Paxton, people across the political spectrum.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. You've taken a criticism of our political system as a whole and turned it into targeting your person. How?

Re: The U.S. has ‘worst elections of any long-established democracy,’ report finds

#30

Post by mikeash »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #2

People aren't willing to make their politicians accountable. It's always the other person's fault, the other side's extremes; never their own. You've got Clinton running an email server exposed to the world as secretary of state, ignoring warnings about it and then lying about it. Yet she will probably end up getting elected because it's all a "Republican conspiracy". Meanwhile, Trump is calling a judge's ruling into…

If Clinton wins, it won't be because her email stuff is dismissed as a conspiracy, it will be because we only have two choices and the other one is vastly worse. (Don't try to tell me about other choices. Third party candidates are the frictionless pulleys of American politics.)
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