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Bernie Sanders' 404 page

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Re: Bernie Sanders' 404 page

#241

Post by pweissbrod »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #152
pweissbrod wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking back to the 2012 election, the sentiment of reducing government/cutting taxes in this country is palpably strong. The word "socialist" itself gradually became established as an anti-american insult. Republicans worked hard to place this label on obama as an affront to american freedom reminiscent of communism. Bernie Sanders is a self-described socialist. His ideals dont align with the prevailing american va…

>Bernie Sanders is a self-described socialist. His ideals dont align with the prevailing american values. Just because you told all the socialists in the USA that we're unpatriotic traitors and should shut the hell up, doesn't mean we stopped actually existing. And now we've got a candidate who stands for our views.

The question was "why isnt bernie sanders a viable candidate?". You just said it yourself: most americans perceive socialist values as the antithesis of american values. Hence your candidate is not viable in this political climate. Sorry, I agree with your spirit but your arguing against a straw man.

Re: Bernie Sanders' 404 page

#242

Post by jameshart »

alwaysAttending wrote: post #99
philangist wrote: post #6

I don't follow politics at all, but the more I read and hear about Bernie Sanders the more I like him. I'm sure we've got a few political experts on Hacker News so I'd love to hear if you guys think he actually has any chance of winning the presidency.

It's funny because that's a general sentiment among Sanders supporters. They like the way he sounds but don't really follow politics. The reality is his policy isn't all that good. It's just very utopian sounding so people love it. Take his Free College For all Bill. It sounds nice doesn't it? Free College for all! I can support that! But in reality it's quite flawed. Beyond the fact that it's just a new 50 billion d…

Why does it have to come from taxes?

Here's the thing: we generally seem to work on the assumption that paying for college is an investment sufficiently worthwhile that people should be willing to consider borrowing money, against their future income potential, to pay for it. Right now, we expect individuals to take on that debt themselves, personally.

That has pretty terrible consequences for the individuals for whom the investment doesn't pay off.

But if, in general it's a good bet that paying to get someone educated will increase the value of their aggregate lifetime economic output, why shouldn't the state be putting some money towards it? The government could borrow money at bond rates and use that to pay for a whole bunch of people to get degrees, and assume that the overall future increase in GDP (and consequent tax take) will be enough to pay back the additional borrowing. An the bonus? Even if there are some people who don't realize the potential economic advantage of their education, on aggregate the bet wins (if you frame it right and make sure the funding went to real degrees with real value, of course).

This is the problem with most rhetoric around government debt. Not all government spending is a write-off - some of it (infrastructure spending, spending on education, R&D funding, international development funding) is an investment in future potential. If an investment is worth making, it's even more worthwhile making it with borrowed money. If the government is borrowing money to pay for medical care for seniors, maybe we have a problem. But to fund educating 20 year olds? That seems likely to be something that could pay off.

Re: Bernie Sanders' 404 page

#243

Post by NoGravitas »

coldpie wrote: post #80
Someone1234 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a natively speaker let me just confirm: English is a very inconsistent language, where rules just as often result in doing the wrong thing as they do the right. Many native speakers get the 's/'/s/ies thing wrong, as well as two/too/to, and so on. I feel bad for anyone learning this language.

Hey, at least we don't have goddamn gendered nouns. What an awful, awful idea that is.

Or [noun classes][0] generally.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noun_class

Re: Bernie Sanders' 404 page

#244

Post by javert »

p_eter_p wrote: post #208
javert wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of America is for the ACA, but against Obamacare, it all depends on how you phrase the question. Citation needed. I can't believe that without some kind of evidence. I can believe that the wording of the question matters, but not that it's "ACA" vs. "Obamacare."

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/09/27/poll-obamaca...

Thanks, though this clearly does not support the claim that was made.

If this is the source of the claim---and it appears that it probably was---the claim is a serious mis-statement.

Re: Bernie Sanders' 404 page

#245

Post by dragonwriter »

andrewfong wrote: post #169
TimJRobinson wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thomas Frank took a stab at this question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_the_Matter_with_Kansa... Worth a read. From my perspective, there's no one answer, but I've noticed a handful of things: * Race - Most democratic socialist countries tend to have more homogeneous populations. The U.S. has sizable African-American and Latino-American minorities, often segregated into their own neighborhoods, and that oft…

> Every dollar spent on bombs is a dollar not spent on healthcare

The US spends more on healthcare -- measured in total, and per capita, and as share of GDP -- than any other OECD country, even though it and Mexico are the only OECD countries without universal healthcare. It spends more out of public funds on healthcare (again, by all three measures) than many OECD countries providing universal healthcare spend in total, while also spending more in private spending on healthcare than it does in public spending.

While the US spending about as much (a while ago it was a little more, right now I think its a hair less) as the rest of the world combined in military spending may be argued to limit resources for other activities, it is manifestly not meaningfully constraining health care spending.

Re: Bernie Sanders' 404 page

#246

Post by res0nat0r »

javert wrote: post #244
p_eter_p wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/09/27/poll-obamaca...

Thanks, though this clearly does not support the claim that was made. If this is the source of the claim---and it appears that it probably was---the claim is a serious mis-statement.

Feel free to Google for other articles that state the same, but the overall point is that: People that claim that Sanders' views are widely supported are not at all indicative of what will translate to the voting booth.

Re: Bernie Sanders' 404 page

#247

Post by dragonwriter »

philwelch wrote: post #21
philangist wrote: post #6

I don't follow politics at all, but the more I read and hear about Bernie Sanders the more I like him. I'm sure we've got a few political experts on Hacker News so I'd love to hear if you guys think he actually has any chance of winning the presidency.

He doesn't. Not even most of the Democratic base will vote for a white male socialist in his 70's over Hillary, and he has no chance of winning the general election even if he were nominated. Even he probably knows this and is only running to make a statement.

> Not even most of the Democratic base will vote for a white male socialist in his 70's over Hillary,

Perhaps.

> and he has no chance of winning the general election even if he were nominated.

The national head-to-head polls I've seen that have included have him beating all the Republicans he is polled against (Trump, Bush, Walker, and Rubio), in some cases by wider margins than Clinton does in the same polls. That's not to say he would win the general if nominated, but I'd certainly expect more than mere assertion from someone who wanted me to accept their argument that he certainly would not do so.

Re: Bernie Sanders' 404 page

#248

Post by dragonwriter »

spoiledtechie wrote: post #66
morganvachon wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Are you comfortable with a socialist leading a capitalist society?

The US isn't a capitalist society, and hasn't been even approximately for most of a century. Like most advanced Western countries, its a modern mixed economy, which features some elements of capitalism -- a system named by its nineteenth century socialist critics for its focus on the interest of the capital-holding class -- but also mixes in many elements of socialism specifically to mitigate the very problems with capitalism that were identified by the critics that named it. This model has -- in a process that, while it started earlier and never really ended, was focused in the early-to-mid-20th Century -- displaced capitalism as the dominant system of the advanced economies of the world.

I'm not sure why a socialist would be less appropriate a leader for a country with a modern mixed economy than a capitalist.

Re: Bernie Sanders' 404 page

#249

Post by cynoclast »

TimJRobinson wrote: post #134
philangist wrote: post #6

I don't follow politics at all, but the more I read and hear about Bernie Sanders the more I like him. I'm sure we've got a few political experts on Hacker News so I'd love to hear if you guys think he actually has any chance of winning the presidency.

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…

Because we average citizens have no voice in public policy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig

Re: Bernie Sanders' 404 page

#250

Post by javert »

res0nat0r wrote: post #246
javert wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, though this clearly does not support the claim that was made. If this is the source of the claim---and it appears that it probably was---the claim is a serious mis-statement.

Feel free to Google for other articles that state the same, but the overall point is that: People that claim that Sanders' views are widely supported are not at all indicative of what will translate to the voting booth.

That may be true---actually, I think it probably is. But that has nothing to do with the extremely bleak and cynical statement you made:

> Most of America is for the ACA, but against Obamacare, it all depends on how you phrase the question

which, fortunately, appears not to be the case.

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