This is not exactly persuasive. Provide a cite or it didn’t happen.
OP, if you wanted to play “gotcha ya!” you could’ve just quoted from Obama’s book.
Bernie was right on one point. Open borders is part of libertarian ideology. Borders restrict the free flow of labor and is thus a barrier to the free market that should be removed. To the extent that some liberals are for open borders it’s another win for the horseshoe theory.
I think the main question is whether you can have a ton of immigration combined with a generous welfare state. Is that sustainable? Or do you have to make a decision? When I look at liberal discussions on this topic there’s usually a study from somewhere that says every immigrant is a plus to the economy. So I guess there’s no decision to make because there’s never a downside. More is always better. Great.
The idea of uplifting developing nations is a good sentiment. We could certainly do a lot more. But ultimately there’s not enough resources on the planet for everyone to live anything close to a Western lifestyle. So Westerners need to lower their standards of living dramatically and/or we need to get way more efficient. America uses, what, 25% of the world’s oil? I guess it’s just generally assumed technology will save us and we’ll be driving electrics powered by windmills and sunshine…eventually.
Areas of concern:
What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy.
…the fuck?
*Ezra Klein
The argument people make about single-payer is that a tremendous amount of health-care innovation around the world is other countries freeloading on the amount of money Americans pay to induce innovation in the pharmaceutical sector, in the medical device sector. Do you worry that if we were successful in pushing down those prices, we would actually see a slowdown in health-care innovation?
Bernie Sanders
I don’t. A lot of the money in health-care research goes into me-too drugs, copycat drugs where they will come up with another drug that really doesn’t substantially increase the kinds of benefits that it has on the patient. In my view, the high cost of prescription drugs is a huge issue — it’s an economic issue, it is a moral issue — and I very much reject what goes on in this country right now. *
…dodges the question by shifting to moralist, bleeding-heart rhetoric.
Sanders, like all socialists, refuses to accept the underpinnings of capitalism. There are winners and there are losers. People act in their self-interest. Without the profit incentive, big pharma will stop R&D into new drugs. It’s that simple.
With regard to the immigration thing, he is correct that a nation-state requires control of immigration. But to so idiotically turn conservatives into the open-borders advocates is…unspeakably dumb.
I expect we’ll be running things on the gentle breath of politicians.
I would love so much to see a debate between Bernie Sanders and any one of the clown car Republicans. He’d hand that candidate his own ass on national tv. Alas, it won’t be Mr. Sanders.