Although the OP is a long block of text, I think he and others are on to one thing:
Socialism, like democracy, is only as effective as its people. If your people are Swedes or Finns, it can work.
If your people are Americans, it probably can’t.
Yep. In the current political climate, I have no satire-dar.
Otherwise I would think every trumpist was hilarious.
Sweden and Finland are not socialist countries.
And many of the policies that social democrats in the US are promoting have been successfully implemented in a great many countries, including many multicultural societies.
We’re certainly not Venezuela or even close, even though we do have problems.
I’d like to see both parties be more responsible with the overall budget. When one party is in power, the other screams about debt, until they come into power, and then they go along with the usual debt/deficits or make it even worse. A great example is Paul Ryan putting on a big act in 2009 on the house floor about debt “as far as the eye can see”, and then passing a 2 trillion dollar tax-cut in 2017, which will increase the debt & deficits over the next decade at least.
Having said that, we are not in any danger of debt overwhelming our ability to pay for the things we need. Our net debt/gdp is somewhere in the 77% range as of 2017 and is projected to reach about 96% in 2028. It’s not great, but it’s not something to consider an emergency, where we all of the sudden hit a fiscal wall. It’s something we can slowly change the trajectory if we wanted. Currently the Republicans are in power, and they have no interest in that, as their tax cuts must take precedent. I think the Dems are more fiscally responsible than Republicans, but that’s not saying much, and in any event, they’re out of power.
Anyone remember back in 2010 when most economists were calling for stimulus, and a handful of right-wing economists (and, unfortunately, the house and senate republicans) warned that we would end up like Greece if we didn’t take our debt seriously? And remember how the US’s situation was nothing like Greece’s, and there’s absolutely no way for what happened in Greece to happen in a country that can freely print its own currency? And remember how every one of their predictions were painfully, destructively wrong?
I’m getting echoes of that here. The comparisons to Venezuela are just silly. Venezuela’s problem is not “socialism”. It’s single-party authoritarian misrule by populist strongmen who have no idea what the fuck they’re doing. It’s gross mismanagement and kleptocracy. It’s the rich working with the government to take whatever the hell they can get their hands on. There are factors in the USA that resemble this trend, but they aren’t currently typified by the people pushing for socialized health care. The comparisons are just batty. To quote that Current Affairs article:
It also quotes this WSJ entry at length:
We can have discussions about socialism and the effect of socialism. But socialism is a slippery word with a lot of different meanings. Some people take it to mean “any government action”. Others take it to mean “government ownership of businesses”. Others take it to mean “social democracy”. Often, people intentionally conflate these definitions to make any action the government could take to make life better for the people sound like a stepping stone on the road to the gulags.
But not only is it profoundly unfair to compare the proposed policies of the American Left to Venezuela no matter what label you use for it, there’s really no argument to be made that Venezuela is socialist or leftist to begin with. Here’s a tip - when your government is cracking down on labor unions, you’re not socialist.
Yes, remember that well. The funny thing is that alot of the politicians who were echoing the “we’re gonna be Greece” crowd are the same folks that supported the most recent deficit-increasing tax cut. Their predictions were wrong back in 2009/2010. And for alot of them, there was a dishonesty to their “Greece” concerns, as became evident with the 2017 tax cuts. And if these are the same people as the “we’re gonna be Venezuela” crowd, then I think we know how this will play out…
What I find frustrating is that we’re decades into a discussion of whether and how the US should implement single-payer healthcare (like every other developed and even some less developed countries) but undertake trillion-dollar wars with little or no discussion. (George W Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost more than two trillion dollars.) But at least wars don’t make us socialists, because that would be the worst thing.
There is so much wrongness wrapped up in those few sentences that it almost reads like a parody of right-wing misinformation on health care. When I saw it yesterday I just sort of sighed and moved on, not having the energy to deal with it. But let me now take a stab at the key points of wrongness.
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Nurses in the US do not obviously make more than in Canada. In fact the highest-paid nurses are in Canada, and except for Quebec, most of the lowest-paid are in the US. Your statement implying that American nurses are making out like bandits is false.
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Doctors are a different matter, but “salaries” isn’t a valid metric since most doctors are effectively business owners and the valid metric is fees and revenues. And they are indeed the highest in the world, but why? Because of the astounding overhead of dealing with insurance paperwork and non-payments from patients and insurers, for which doctors have to maintain dedicated staff, and none of which exists in sensible health care systems. Additional factors are lack of cost controls which enables profiteering among some, and the costs of malpractice insurance. All of those things are serious problems with the system, not features. They don’t contribute quality, they detract from it: costs and out-of-pocket payments discourage doctor visits and early diagnosis and drive demands for unnecessary testing, and for-profit hospitals have been shown to have lower standards and poorer outcomes than non-profit ones.
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The ability of pharmaceutical companies to price-gouge in the US marketplace has little to do with the health care system or the high costs thereof, but to lack of regulation. In Canada, for instance, there is a federal authority called the Patent Medicine Prices Review Board which requires drug companies to justify the prices charged for brand name drugs protected by patents. It’s simply a consumer protection agency and has no connection with provincial health care plans.
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The idea that profiteering in the health care industry has anything to do with innovation is laughable nonsense. Doctors making extortionate incomes certainly don’t fund medical research, and insurance companies making enormous profits don’t fund anything except their executives’ yachts and golf club memberships. Health insurers are basically parasites on the industry contributing zero value, since public single-payer can do a far better job and provide universal coverage for everyone at a fraction of the cost. Furthermore, expensive high-end medical technology is targeted to global markets, not just the US market, and most of the innovation for expensive technology like MRI and CT machines comes from outside the US, as I described here, the key quote being the following: among the top 10 diagnostic imaging innovators, only two are American (or three if you count GE’s UK subsidiary), and except for GE they’re mostly small players in this market.
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I’m amused at the idea that “no one really wants to see a world where we stop spending so much”. Actually, I think everyone wants to see less waste and better outcomes like in the rest of the civilized world, with the exception of those who directly benefit from the waste: health insurers, health care administrators, and the worst of the profiteering extortionists who ply their trade in the industry.
Cripes folks, it’s apparently an actual PR campaign.
Exactly when did the standard conservative critique of socialism start switching from “The miseries of overtaxed socialist poverty may be good enough for those wussy loser cheap-furniture Scandinavians, but they’re sure not good enough for US!” to “Those clear-eyed cold-hardy extra-white Scandinavians may be good enough for clean-governance socialist prosperity, but WE sure aren’t!” ?
What you have right now is chaos with massively expensive inefficiencies. If you ditch the chaos and go with single payer, you’ll end up living longer, living healthier longer, paying less out of your personal pockets, and paying less through your governments’ pockets, such as we do here in Canada. Try comparing the USA against first world nations like Canada rather than third world nations like Mexico.
Protecting yourself from that security threat Canada, according to Trump.
That gives me an idea. Forget about supporting UHC in order to improve the lives of Americans. Sell it instead that if we cut the cost by say 4% GDP we’ll have a lot of extra money to spend on shiny tanks and destroyers and planes.
“Reduce money for shots, increase money for shooting!”
They’ll eat it right up.
Why?
OP’s thesis seems to be that the U.S.A. is a third-world nation, but which just happens to have a lot of wealth (and is thus somewhat similar to Venezuela with its huge petroleum reserves). One of the major political parties seems to agree with OP.
It wasn’t long ago that I’d have laughed at this thesis.
It’s just possible other nations spend less on defence because they’re not spending so much time and energy making enemies, engaging in foreign conflicts and meddling in the affairs of other nations.
Perhaps they value quality education for all, social safety nets for the in need, and equal healthcare for everyone, above bigger, better war machines, larger standing armies etc.
Just something to consider.
According to Trump, one of the gravest threats to US national security is the Canadian cow, pictured here along with her presidential adversary, with the cow looking considerably more intelligent. The Canadian cow is such a threat that this is presumably why Trump has to partner with his trusted ally, Vladimir Putin, to fend off this global scourge. The accompanying story is here, with more details here.
The short version is that the US has a massive overproduction of dairy products, and would like to dump the overproduction on Canada. Trump was furious when he found out that the Canadian government imposes quotas on diary imports roughly limited by what the Canadian population is capable of consuming, and then levying 270% tariffs on imports over this quota as an anti-dumping measure. He falsely claims that 270% tariffs are always imposed on all US dairy imports, and hence the Canadian cow was demonized and has become for Trump what Alger Hiss was for Nixon. Both men, fittingly, battled an intellectual nemesis matching their own cerebral aptitude.
I’m totally with you about Trump and trade with Canada (among many issues that I have with Trump). But you lost me on the Nixon/Hiss analogy. What happened with Nixon/Hiss that’s similar to Trump & cows.
You’re overthinking it. Just look at these two faces and tell me which one looks more intelligent. 
Also, though this is getting off topic, this is a succinct analysis from the Brookings Institution about why the whole dairy kerfuffle with Canada is just typical Trump-manufactured nonsense.
Incidentally, and on the first topic, notice in the picture accompanying the Brookings article that all four cows closest to the camera are looking at it. Why? Because they’re curious, a sign of at least rudimentary intelligence. Trump has famously never been curious about anything in his life, which is why he doesn’t know anything.
Nobody needs to be told that, it’s self-evident.
Nixon was about as bright as Hiss, and fought against him. Trump is fighting against cows, because someone like Alger Hiss is way out of his league.
It’s not a third-world nation of course, but it has the fear of everyone, and the backstabbing, and the psychotic fixation on weapons and armies, and the criminal for a president, that you would expect to find in a third-world nation.