On the evidence, you get better results. You might get the “European social model” instead of the American.
From “The American Paradox,” an article by Ted Halstead, in the February 1, 2003, edition of The Atlantic Monthly:
Totaling up both sides of the column, on balance, I say we’ve made a bad bargain.
Not that switching to a PR-based multiparty system would necessarily produce more progressive public policies (political circumstances on the ground are rather different here than any other country you can name), but it would least open up the possibility. Progressives would no longer be frozen out. OTOH, neither would Libertarians.
You’re assuming you can just mix and match. I’d say that list says one thing: freedom. If freedom is your goal, that list looks like a fairly logical outcome. Many of the items in the negative column are largely a matter of person choice or initiative.
It rather depends how you define “freedom”. If you want to talk about traditional liberal, libertarian, Locke-style freedoms, the US comes out on top. But on the other hand, if you talk about modern liberal, Isiah Berlin-“positive freedom”- ie. the freedom to achieve what you want irrespective of your class, family or wealth- than the US does rather worse. No matter how positive you may consider the entrepeurnerial, low-tax-based economy of the US, it is exactly that style of economy (one based on freedom from intervention) that keeps the average person born into poverty from ever getting a chance of a good education or a well-paying job.
As a self-styled “practical democratic socialist,” I tend to agree that Europe does better.
I fail to see any connection. Britain also has those goodies but not a multiparty system.
I think the fact that we are not as socialist as we need to be comes from the overall political culture and not a lack of participation on the part of little parties. Conversely, if Scandanavia went to a two-party system, I doubt they would dump their welfare states.
I think America will eventually move in the right direction through political evolution. It will start with people across the political board realizing (at last!) that medical care for all is absolutely necessary. Basically, the Democratic party will have to lead, just as it did under the New Deal. But I don’t want little political parties, liberal as they may be, “dividing and conquering” the Democrats while the fascists stay strong through greater cohesion.
Too socially liberal? John McCain? Let’s see… John McCain is anti-abortion. He wants the War on Drugs expanded, and drug sentences made harsher. He supports the death penalty, and in general tougher sentencing for most crimes. He’s opposed to increasing the minimum wage. He’s opposed to the Kyoto treaty. He supports a federal concealed carry gun law, and wants to protect gun manufacturers from lawsuits. He has the same position as Bush on stem cells. He supports making welfare recipients donate 40 hours a week of community service or training.
As for whether he’s not ‘Neocon-aggressive’ enough, whatever that is… McCain strongly supported the war in Iraq, and still does. His and Bush’s positions on the war on terror are virtually identical - so much so that some pundits have speculated that Bush will endorse McCain if McCain wants him to, despite their personal animosity, for the simple reason that McCain is the only contender out there right now who can be counted on to carry Bush’s WoT policies.
McCain supports military tribunals for suspected terrorists, and supports the use of pre-emptive strikes against countries that are deemed a national security threat to the U.S.
If I were a Republican presidential candidate, I’d be spending my time trying to figure out how McCain got the left to love him and think he’s a liberal. It’s a good trick.
Campaign finance reform. It lets him stand up next to Russ Feingold and play populist, and complain about how big corporations and special interests have too much influence. People eat that up.
True. You can make good arguments on both sides. But we the American people, voting under our present system, never get the chance to make a meaningful choice between those alternatives in those terms.
True. You can make good arguments on both sides. But we the American people, voting under our present system, never get the chance to make a meaningful choice between those alternatives in those terms. We only get to choose within a range of options deemed safe by the corporate interests.
Why certainly. A less broadly-based, but nevertheless interesting graphic here . The methodolgy represented by that graphic is explained here. Note in particular the paragraph:
In other words, not only is there a high degree of economic inequality in the US (which is growing- also note that the idea that the EU member states are not significantly more socially mobile than the US is questioned, for example here), but it is not offset by a significant amount of social mobility. Therefore, the chances of a poor man dying poor (I am representing “what you want” here as “economic success”) are much higher in the US than in other countries, certainly suggesting that the US system is less capable at delivering “equality of opportunity” than, for example, most European countries.
The chance of economic success for a person born into poverty is certainly lower than that of a child to a rich family (both as the links above and as common sense shows; after all, the chance of going to a good university, for example, rises exponentially with the wealth of the prospective student’s family). I think that the low quality of American public schooling (compared to other countries- warning PDF!) demonstrates that those with the cash are more likely to have their children succeed (since they can afford to send them to private schools, for instance), as does the discrepancy between the quality of schooling in high-income areas and low-income ones (since the majority of school funding in America is provided by regional property taxes).
Because they’d learned a lesson from the 2000 election – but not the only lesson to be learned from it. In some circumstances, tacking left might well the smartest thing the Dems could do.
I don’t see how any of that proves the statement you made in the earlier post about how other countires compare to the US. And your own cite makes it clear that there is disagreement among social scientists:
I agree with that, but that’s a lot difference from what you said earlier. Are you retracting that statement, or just making a new statement independent of the earlier one?
Just to add a bit more to that last post, it’s one thing to say it’s easy for rich kids to stay rich later in life, but that has nothing whatsover to do with how hard it is for poor kids to escape their backgrounds as they grow up. It’s not that hard, if one is willing to make a few simple choices-- stay in school, don’t have kids until you can reasonably expect to afford them, and don’t get hooked on drugs. I believe that any poor person who follows those simple rules has an excellent chance of escaping poverty in the US.
You really think making those choices is that easy?
The biggest roadblock poor people face is that they have to grow up among other poor people. It’s a cycle – bad habits are reinforced by daily example. I forget who said this: “Crime is not caused by poverty, crime is caused by concentrations of poverty.”
While his attack on the First Amendment is a biggie, it’s not the only thing I don’t like about him.
His vote against tax cuts, his vote against the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996, which phased out many of the farming subsidy programs put into place during the Great Depression, his opposition to permanently eliminating the inheritance tax. His positions on global warming, his vote against the Federal Marriage Amendment, the awful bill he’s pushing on immigration, his position on stem cells, the fact that he talks out of both sides of his mouth on gun control. Etc., Etc., etc… I could go on&on.
I fully realize that no pol is perfect. We all have to pick & choose issues when looking at a candidate. I certainly was not overly enthused with Bush. But there are way, way too many things about JM I find unacceptable.
And the idea of a Democraticly control congress with a McCain presidency scares the shit out of me.