Why? The USA is pink, which means enacted, just like Russia. Other nations in Europe are grey or pink.
In any case, having or not having Universal health care is not a matter of being “backward”. I think confiscatory taxes are “backward”, myself.
Yeah, I don’t see universal health care as a backwards vs. progressive issue like gay rights or women’s rights.
Health care is a social benefit that nations provide to their citizens in proportion to what the nation can afford. Unlike rights, which are universal, health care coverage is usually a benefit of residency in a particular country.
A few things here. First, stop deluding yourself. These issues haven’t been “figured out,” and it’s incredible how you try and paint one side of a platter of highly contentious political issues as “social progress” and the other as “outdated.” That speaks volumes to a narrow-mindedness you’d do well to discard. Second, this issue can’t be swept up under the rug by hiding behind “federalism,” as this merely postpones the more central question of why so many states have adopted these policies. This is less “How does the American political infrastructure work?” and more “Are the social policies the general American culture has adopted the correct ones?” Third, since you seem confused about the thought processes that go into the flip side, I’ll be more than happy to summarize those positions:
Death Penalty (Pro) – Provides a strong disincentive to crime; for heinous acts, may be the only punishment that feels appropriately just
Abortion (Con) – Life begins at conception [religious argument]; devalues the worth of human life in the social sphere / encourages promiscuous behavior [secular argument]
Socialized Health Care (Con) – Greatly decreases quality of care; better HC alternatives available (i.e. those that balance public and private sectors more prudently)
Gay Marriage (Con) – Marriage has ontological significance in religious institutions; should be up to to the Church, not the government, to decide if that phrase should be attributed to homosexual couples (although as far as legal rights go, I don’t think anyone except bigots are “anti-gay”).
To be clear, I don’t actually agree with any of these except the death penalty and, to an extent, health care. But the dismissive way you treat the other aisle isn’t really acceptable.
Bullshit.
Death penalty: never proven to be a deterrent. I don’t give a fuck about what some people may think “feels appropriately just”. Then there’s that little thing about executing innocent people
Abortion: Lots of religious folk do NOT believe life begins at conception. Does not devalue life in the social sphere and does not promote promiscuity.
Socialized medicine: does NOT diminish quality of care. There are NO more cost effective schemes anywhere in the world.
Gay marriage: churches do NOT have authority to define what the government recognizes as marriage.
I agree the death penalty isn’t a deterrent, but I also don’t think it’s cruel. if anything, the conditions of our prisons violate the 8th amendment, although I’m not sure what can be done about that given that you’re putting a bunch of really bad people in a small space together.
Socialized medicine, we don’t need to have that debate in this thread, but suffice to say that there are very reasonable disagreements on what UHC does to quality of care.
This is indisputably false. Canada literally has no abortion law of any kind.
Okay, so Canada is more liberal. But is it defined in the Constitution as a right, or can it be taken away by simple majority vote in Parliament?
Let’s look ahead 5 years. Do you not think that it is inevitable that in the US:
Gay marriage will be legal
Abortion will remain legal
Universal healthcare will be provided
The idea of teaching Creationism in school will be laughable
The death penalty will be abolished
You could have made a similar list 100 years ago and predicted that Jim Crow would disappear and women would have full civil rights. Two hundred hears ago you could have seen the handwriting on the wall for slavery.
There are just certain groups of people that need to dragged, kicking and screaming, into the modern world. It’s unfortunate, because if they just realized that the world is inevitably changing they could participate in the process of making it better. The United States’ recent UHC bill could have been much better if people of goodwill worked together towards a common vision rather than figuratively standing in the doorway with ax handles trying to prevent reason from entering the building.
I don’t understand how Sweden decided the issue of the death penalty. Was there a popular vote? Did the government decide and the people just do whatever the government tells them? Did the individual Swede have a say in the process?
No, not inevitable at all. Of the 5 you’ve listed, I would bet against 3 or 4.
Seriously? In five years:
Gay marriage will continue to be legal in some states, forbidden in others, and at the federal level numerous cases will be pending before the Supreme Court and Jerome Nadler will introduce legislation in Congress to repeal DOMA, but the legislation will die in committee and somehow the court cases won’t be definitively ruled upon.
Abortion will remain legal, but various states will continue to restrict access.
Universal healthcare will not be provided; the percentage of people insured will be slightly higher than it is today.
The idea of teaching Creationism in school will be laughable, except in private schools, homeschooling, and the schools of a few midwestern and southern states.
The death penalty will remain on the books, but rarely be enforced.
I agree with the whole list except for the death penalty. And the death penalty issue contains another problem: it’s a slippery slope. In many countries that have abolished the death penalty, they’ve also abolished life sentences.
There is yet another reason, and that’s that America has gotten so soaked in its own propaganda that “American is Number One in the world in everything that matters!” that we have lost an interest in, or ability to, learn from other nations.
Wasn’t always so. Post offices were a European idea, we jumped on it and made it our own. Hell, the very basis of our economic success, modern manufacturing techniques, were developed in Europe but found their full flowering in America because at the time we had something the Europeans did not have: a labor shortage. Hell, the ideas that are the basis of American democracy were almost all European in origin.
Now we look at Europe with its socialized medicine being delivered at MUCH lower costs, and MUCH more effectively, to all Europeans, and we are happy to stick with being Number One (Yay!) in cost of health care and Number 37 according to a report by the World Health Organization in 2000, in quality of care. But hey, America is Numero Uno, we got NOTHING to learn from Europe.
Americans have the largest number of citizens locked up per capita in the world AND our homicide rate runs about three or four times (4.8 per thousand, down from 9.8 per thousand in 1991 though) that of most European nations (most of which were under 1.5 per thousand). But we got NOTHING to learn from Europe.
Americans have an expensive and unsuccessful educational system … a recent OECD report ranked the United States students 14th in reading skills, 17th in math skills and 25th in math skills out of 34 OECD counties. You know who is ranked number one? Finland! But hey, we’re the United States, we got NOTHING to learn from Europe or anywhere else. Because we are, all logic and numerical indicators to the contrary, Number One!
I find it interesting that so many have classified your post as arrogant. I think I know where the bulk of the world supply of arrogance lies, and it’s not in Europe, nope. Because this is America, and we’re NUMBER ONE in arrogance and stupidity!
MURRIKA! MURRIKA! MURRIKA! NUMBER ONE! YEAH!
I agree that America should learn from other countries, but liberals are just a parochial in that regard as anyone else. They generally just cite a few policies they like as things we should emulate(like single payer health care), while ignoring some of the other things that work well for them. Sweden has private social security accounts. We’ve been assured such things would doom our system. European countries fully exploit their natural resources, whereas we keep whole swathes of ours off limits. European countries have stricter immigration policies than we do. Paul Krugman has said that you can’t have both a liberal immigration policy and a generous welfare state. You have to choose one. Europe has chosen. American liberals haven’t learned either from their example or from their favorite Nobel Prize winning economist. Europe has more regressive taxes than we do and some even have lower top rate income taxes than we do to go with regressive VATS and social insurance taxes. Most of Europe has a mix of private and public insurance, yet American liberals want single payer.
At the same time, Europeans are pretty arrogant as well. Just as we often reject ideas just because they are European, they reject ideas just because they are American.
Who has done this assuring? I’m unsure what you’re moaning about.
Sorry, you what?
Every EU country (well, apart from some of the very new ones) has a completely open border policy to other EU countries, both in terms of visiting and working. I am British living in Sweden. I don’t need any sort of visa or anything, I can just move here and decide to live.
Like? I mean, you’ve just pointed out yourself that Sweden, where I live, has decided to do something quite US-like with our state pension (PPM). (Note: this is what you seem to be implying anyway. People here wouldn’t see PPM as “Social Security”, that is more the lien of benefits which is handled by Försäkringskassan and, as far as I am aware, is not done with private accounts).
But way to go on insulting an entire continent.
Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot this thread was only about insulting America. I’ll get back on topic.
There are two problems I see with the OP:
First is that he assumes that the social norms of his home country, Sweden, are also those of Europe as a whole. Europe is a big continent, and the situation is different in different places. Compare the contentious issues in Poland, or Serbia, say.
Second, he assumes that there should naturally be the same contentious issues the world over. Sure, in the US abortion is a big issue. Maybe it’s not an issue elsewhere. But something else is. In Canada, for example, abortion is not an issue at all. But language is. Everywhere you go, there’s something political that people are arguing about. I don’t know enough about Sweden to know what the issues there are, but I know that the politicians there are arguing about something.
I left off the 0, I meant 50.
How come the Europeans can’t resolve the currency issue? We (the US) have had a single currency for 150 years (i.e. since the ACW) without any problems and nobody has had serious discussions of (re-)introducing their own currency.
You can probably add ‘gun control’ to the OP’s list.