Death Penalty
The following US states have decided they do not want the death penalty and have abolished it:
Michigan (first English-speaking government in the world to abolish it, actually), Alaska, Hawaii, Wisconsin, Rhode Island, Maine, North Dakota, Minnesota, West Virginia, Iowa, Vermont, Illinois (very recent), New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, New Mexico.
Abortion
Other posters have covered this already, safe to say the US is a patchwork of abortion laws/access, some states being more restrictive than most of Europe and some less. Some states, such as New York, had legal abortion prior to the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized it for everyone.
Gay Rights
Various enormously by state, with some having same sex marriage and some not, some protecting sexual orientation and some not.
Healthcare
I agree, we’re largely stupid about this as a whole. I don’t think it will change until about 70-80% of the population can no longer access care under our current effed-up “system”
Basically, in the US many of these issues are decided on a STATE level, not a national one. The only way to get a uniform stance on an issue across the whole country is via constitutional amendment, which requires 3/4 of the states to agree to - at which point you’ve probably already reached a tipping point and may no longer need one.
But you’re the one who brought it up with the OP, no? Maybe I misunderstand and you mean “Why won’t the US resolve these issues?”, but I took it as a question of why the US won’t resolve issues in general.
Official word is that Sweden (where I live) doesn’t have quotas so there is no specific number that is allowed. I can’t speak for the rest of the EU as, frankly, I have no idea.
Then again, as someone that moved here from another country when I didn’t even speak the language - and the border was completely open to me - I haven’t had to think too much about it.
It’s been illustrated, repeatedly, that the U.S. Treasury could save a fair amount of money if we switched from dollar bills to dollar coins (a bill lasts about 18 months, on average; a coin lasts several decades). Canada did it a few decades ago, and it worked very well. The U.S. Mint has introduced dollar coins repeatedly, and they languish for utter lack of use. Forcing a switch (i.e., just pulling the bills out of circulation) would be met with howls of protest, over a perceived cost to retailers who would have to refit cash registers*, and to those who feel that the “dollar bill” is somehow a symbol of America. In short: I can’t see it ever happening.
Similarly, the efforts to switch the country over to the Metric system back in the 1970s were a disaster. People complained it was too hard, and it wasn’t the “American way” to measure things.
Stubborn, we are.
– I was just up in Toronto last week. While shopping, I saw several cash register drawers in which a coin bin (for $1 and $2 coins) had been taped into the old $1 bill slot. I’d estimate that “switch” cost the retailer $10, at most.
When I was coming of age in the furious years of the early 2000s, the number one complaint I heard about the US from “the rest of the Western world” was that Americans were mindless sheep, fearfully doing whatever their leaders told them, with no meaningful debate or opposition. This struck me as ludicrous: EVERYONE in the US was debating EVERYTHING, all the time. We still are, and always have been, at least as far back as I can remember.
I think that’s the answer to the OP’s question. We just have a fractious, argumentative culture - far more so, frankly, than anything I’ve seen in any of the countries that accused us of being “sheeple”. The Tea Party, the Occupy Movement, FOX News, MSNBC - people of all political stripes are out there loudly butting heads. I have the impression - and here the OP can correct my ignorance - that such strident political discourse doesn’t happen to the same degree in a country like Sweden. (Well hell, the entire premise of the thread is that people in Sweden don’t really argue about these things…) And did I read upthread that the OP can’t even remember much debate when major political changes happened?
I’m not saying the…“vigorous”…US political climate is the best system. It’s wearying, it turns people off, and it slows down progress. But on the flip side, there’s also something nice - or at least healthy - about people debating so many things instead of just blindly going with the crowd.
I can only speak about Spain. A few years ago a few hundred thousand people who were here (here meaning “Spain”) without papers were made “legal”. Those were people from South America, Africa and Asia.
Immigration from South America to Spain is (to a certain degree) relatively easy, with many South American countries having double-nationality agreements with Spain. Quite a few of those South American immigrants who got their papers to stay in Spain later went to other countries in the EU, where they were allowed to go and establish themselves for they had been accepted in Spain first.
I find it incredibly fallacious to assume that the policies described by the OP are inevitably right, despite the fact that I’m against the death penalty, pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage and proud of the NHS. Everything depends on contexts and conditions. Who’s to say we won’t change our minds in 50 years time?
As for inevitabilities…a hundred years ago it was considered ‘inevitable’ that the world would be communist. Look how that turned out.
Saying that the Articles of Confederation failed as a government is like criticizing a cat for not barking at burglars. Clearly the Confederation did something right, considering that we aren’t all bowing to the Queen.
A key to answering the OPs question is understanding how the 2 Party System works. In Sweden if a party adopts a position that embarrasses a chunk of its members they can leave for a party with a similar ideology or even found a new party. Here that can’t happen. So the economic elite can exploit social conservatives for their votes (since plutocracy just isn’t popular enough to win elections) and in return have to pay at least lip service to issues such as abortion and gay marriage. This is how these causes are empowered. The superrich don’t much care. Abortions and gay marriage don’t cost them money. If we had a genuine multiparty democracy the social conservatives would have deserted the Republican Party long ago for a one that didn’t work against their economic interests. Without the unholy marriage of Big Money and Big God these issues would have diminished in importance since they don’t matter to those who really matter in America.
The death penalty is an exception, I think. Mostly it’s still around because of the immaturity of the American public. Opposing it can make a politician look weak. So there’s no future in it. The same with gun control, I’m afraid. So the Democrats don’t push those for change on the national level since they know they are loser issues. Not that there aren’t honest and mature people on both sides of these issues. Certainly there are. But the political reality is that overall it’s about the image rather than the substance of those issues.
Death penalty: What if I could prove to you that imposing the death penalty for corruption and financial crimes would have prevented the global financial meltdown? Wouldn’t that make the death penalty GOOD social policy? Think of all the death and suffering that could have been avoided if the financial collapse hadnt occurred. I am generally against capital punishment but I can see the argument for imposing capital punishment for large scale financial crimes because I think there is a significant deterrent effect.
Abortion: What if I could prove to you that making abortions illegal reduces the number of abortion that occur. That there are a lot of people who would not risk an illegal abortion and would rather have their child or give it up for adoption? I happen to think abortions should be legal because of the impact that being a teenage mother has on the life of that mother but making abortions illegal does in fact reduce the number of abortions.
Healthcare: I am a big fan of universal healthcare, I have lived in countries with universal healthcare but there is a saying “universal healthcare is the healthcare system you want for your country, private health care is the health care you want for your family” I support a universal healthcare system that leaves room for me to go and buy higher levels of healthcare so that I dont have to wait for months or go to another country to get an MRI.
Gay rights: Not really sure we are that far behind other nations.
I disagree, I think there is a right answer on the death penalty.
The typical arguments for the death penalty are punishment, societal vengeance and deterrence.
We will never achieve a zero percent error rate on the death penalty so just having a death penalty means that we risk a wrongful execution and we will eventually execute an innocent person. It is hard to justify potential wrongful execution for the sake of punishment or vengeance when life without parole is a vaible alternative to achieve those same goals, espcially when history tells us that the victims of wrongful executions are likely to be disproportionately black and that blacks generally get sentenced to the death penalty at higher rates for the same crimes than whites, and asians.
The ONLY thing I can think of that would justify the state engaging in this sort of activity is if the deterrent effect is high enough to jsutify the (hopefully) rare cases of wrongful execution. Right now there simply isnt enough evidence to conclude either way, so deterrence (or lack thereof) has become an article of faith in the death penalty debate.
It also dramatically affects HOW MANY abortions are performed.
And that sounds like faith, not reason.
I have noticed the phenomenon that catholics are more likely to use contraceptives, mostly because abortion is not an option for a lot of them so…
I have seen nothing that even gets close to showing that the death penalty has a “significant deterrent effect” on anything.
Reducing abortions would have the inevitable affect of there being many, many unwanted children delivered into the world, often into poverty or bouncing from foster home to foster home (sorry, but they don’t all get adopted). Less abortions doesn’t mean less pregnancies.
I’ve lived in two countries with UHC (the UK and Sweden) and I’ve never heard that phrase (or equivalent) in either(*), which leads me to think that it is something you hear in the US where, unsurprisingly, they have no experience of UHC.
(*) Additionally, Google doesn’t seem to find any examples using no quotes around the text and only this thread if you use quotes.
If you read later in the post, I say that there simply isn’t enough information to reach a robust conclusion about deterrence. The information is simply too sparse. One thing does seem fairly certain, we will not achieve very much deterrence with the current level of executions. We need to execute a LOT more people, like hundreds or thousands more per year.
That wasn’t the point. Making abortions illegal reduces the number of abortions. All those people who would have gotten an abortion don’t end up in a back alley with a coat hanger like the OP seems to think.
I heard it from a Brit.
These are not the catholics you run into in big cities. They make their peace with god and use birth control pills and condoms.
ETA: I am in favor of universal healthcare but I want some private elements.
While I personally oppose capital punishment, there is in fact a growing body of evidence that it does have a deterrent effect. Economists have been examining the issue for some time and many studies demonstrate a deterrence, which I admit surprises me but the facts are what they are. Joanna Shepherd has famounsly done a number of studies on the issue and consistently finds a deterrent effect.
Of course, there are, in my opinion, many costs associated with capital punishment that make in unacceptable.
Of course, there is one sure deterrance- the person executed will never kill again.
This, IMHO is the only reason to allow the DP, simple to prevent a madman form killing over and over. Even in prison, under a life sentence, what with escapes, killing other prisoners, guards, etc.
There was a story a little while ago about this idiot who was sent to prison for a short sentence as he killed a child while driving drunk. The idiot was murdered in cold blood by a lifer.
You saying “Isn’t enough information” doesn’t actually sit well with you saying “I can see the argument for imposing capital punishment for large scale financial crimes because I think there is a significant deterrent effect.” Either there is or there isn’t, what is it?
But some do try unusual methods to force a miscarriage. And those babies being born into a shit life, well let’s just say that amusingly the more likely someone is to be anti-abortion the more likely they are to not believe in the welfare state, meaning they want more unwanted children around but less resources to care for them. Which is awesome.
As a Brit I have never heard it. I also couldn’t find it on Google (except in this thread). So I conclude it is less a saying, more something one guy said once.
Well, speaking as an American, all the arguments you set forth are either obviously stupid or based on superstition, except the death penalty argument, which while not stupid in its own right is hardly an answer to the powerful arguments against it. I get so tired of having to treat all this bullshit as if it’s reasonable. In short, I totally understand the OP’s position.
