It does not seem that hard.

(1) Trump is very popular with Republican voters.

(2) Republican politicians try to distance themselves a bit from his most extreme rhetoric but have not used their power to stop him or his agenda.

This isn't even that uncommon or surprising. Politicians tend not to oppose the leader of their party when he has strong support from that party's voters. These guys are all running for re-election as Republicans. Opposing Trump seems like electoral suicide for them.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the president of the United States:



And there you have the US response by the president, on being lied to about on the foreign assassination of a journalist (who criticized his countries leaders) and permanent US resident.

Oh, and then there was this:



I mean, if comedians and performers can put a little effort into it to get it right night after night, surely the dumbass in chief could put a little effort into getting it right for a city that quite literally burned to the ground.

Meanwhile, back in 'let's change the subject land":




These are the direct quotes. No opinion, no spin, simply the words of the man. He both knows everyone, everything, and knows nothing. He's got the best people, but they've never met. He's has a plan, or maybe he doesn't, we'll see. But one thing is for sure, he gives himself an A+ for the job he's doing.

It's not exactly hard to get that economy humming when you've dumped a trillion dollar stimulus (with no intention to pay it back) into it when it was already moving along. I thought that stimulus packages were for recessions, not bull markets? The last 2 years are the most egregious, thoughtless, economic policy that we've seen, and we're going to wonder why things are so hard to recover from when the economy finally turns south (2019 or 2020).

Just look at Flake and Graham. Flake has no future in the GOP even though he was a consistent vote for Trump because he was also vocally critical. Graham has decided to renounce his past criticisms and embrace Trump fully and he's never been more popular with GOP voters in SC.

This does not have to do with Trump per-se, but I think that the GOP is obsessing way too much over Ocasio-Cortez. Her politics are too far left for my taste, but she's personally very likable, and I think that they more they attack her, the worse they look. Losing your shit over how a woman dresses seems like exactly the thing you would do if you didn't want to win back the suburban soccer moms.

Seriously. And she has really little power right now. She's going to be sworn in as a regular Congressperson. They are going nuts over her for no reason.

She might not need rent money after all since she's living rent free inside their head

She's very good at capitalizing on the publicity though. She's a bit of a social media force right now.

Indeed. Don't get me wrong, I think she's quite savvy and intelligent. But she has no real power aside from 1 vote in the House. The GOP attacking her so much on silly things is playing into her wheelhouse (and making a lot of them look out of touch).

Everything's a con.

...and pretty cute, too.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/19/ivan...-business.html

I'm sure Republicans will be calling for mass investigations soon. I mean any time now.

I wonder if they were classified

Trump's personal calls certainly are.

Allegedly she didn't have even an interim Top Secret clearance until the middle of 2017. Which doesn't preclude her having sent classified stuff via her private email between June '17 and now, but you'd hope, in theory, she would have been given a heads-up between January and June on what she should and shouldn't be doing.

Only the last sentence here is true; and that's because the first sentence is completely false. Socialism has nothing to do with the armed forces, and what's described here isn't socialism, so I think we're really dealing with a language barrier.

Maybe the same thing exists when the populace is polled, and they don't really want socialism, they just want what they mistakenly think socialism is. But to compare to the polls I mentioned previously, a 2016 poll taken during the primary season found that 50% of those voting on the Democratic Party side favored socialism over capitalism, given a choice between the two. The choice given there isn't 'do you want a social safety net' or 'do you think universal health care is a good thing' or 'should housing be subsidized'. It's 'do we have the wrong fundamental basis for our economic system at its core', which is a completely different question.


Absolutely. These however were not the questions under discussion; that matter was whether Republican voters were indicating by their vote and support of him that they favor white nationalism, or whether there might possibly be other reasons for their support in the great majority of cases. Reasons such as, just throwing things out there, the reasons they themselves repeatedly stated for their support when polled about the subject.

But we also have data that racial resentment is highly correlated with support for Trump. I wouldn't ever say everyone that voted for Trump was a racist, but we have pretty good data that a lot of racists voted for Trump.

People don't exactly jump at the chance to call themselves white nationalists in a poll.

Trump's policies aren't much different from your run-of-the-mill Republican. What separated him was the white nationalism. It was the cornerstone of his campaign and something he has pushed more than anything else in his Presidency. His rise to popularity in politics centered around his pushing of the racist birther conspiracy (which the majority of Republicans believe).

Regardless of the reasons they state, those people did not think a white nationalist was a disqualifying factor in being the President.

Also AOC isn't an actual socialist. She isn't calling for seizing the means of production. Democratic-Socialists are just people who feel there should be a bigger safety net than currently available. They aren't looking to emulate Venezuela, they're looking to emulate Europe.

Calling themselves Democrat Socialists doesn't do them any favors.

As I said yesterday, trump is moving on from the Saudi assassination of a US resident. He's pulling the maybe we know, maybe we don't, but nobody will ever really know (how could we) line to avoid dealing with it. Not shocking...at all.

Democratic Socialists are socialists. They believe in achieving socialism through democratic means. AOC and her ilk may not be calling for seizing the means of production right now, but wait until they get some real influence.

Stoke that fear baby

That's the same reason I keep saying RepubLICANS are pro-werewolf!

Yep that's what it looks like-here's the statement from the White House:


Statement from President Donald J. TrumpÂ*on Standing with Saudi Arabia | The White House

Yep. A lot of the analysis after the election showed that racial animus was a key for Trump voters. Those voters that voted for Obama twice and then voted for Trump were most swayed by Trump's xenophobic rhetoric against Mexicans and Muslims (people wonder how you can say people who voted for Obama twice were animated by racism I guess tend to forget that there are more than two races?).

He needs someone to launder money through his businesses.

I kinda forgot how deep-rooted the phobia towards anything even remotely veering away from hard cold capitalism is in the US.

As someone who studied the history/policies/ideologies of actual socialist movements (as americans understand the word) I would second the Venezuela/Europe statement by RainMaker. It continues to boggle the mind how as a country the need to protect against some perceived threat to the perceived (and often remote) possibility to 'make it' continues to dwarf the need to drag the self-proclaimed greatest country in the world out of mediocrity (at best, i might add) in terms of social security and, quite frankly, quality of life for a large portion of the population.

There's so many things worth fixing when it comes to this area (or connected areas like healthcare) and yet somehow people are up in arms whenever someone tries.

I mean, your president just got away with abusing his office and costing the american tax payer untold millions by sending troops on a little southern vacation because of that very mentality ... And at this point i think i will stop just short of diving into the rabbit hole that is military spending.

The statement is also full of (the usual) factual errors and blatant omissions.

Trump’s Khashoggi statement is a green light for murder - Vox

Well, at least he didn't bring up the 10 million (must be that high by now) jobs the Saudis are financing in the US.

It's kind of weird considering our bastardized version of capitalism in this country. We've socialized losses for the major banks and financial institutions. We give massive handouts to companies like Amazon. Our health care industry is set up to subsidize the pharmaceutical and insurance companies.

It's obviously a spectrum with no clear deliniation but in the American context it seems pretty clear that those on the far left that want a Medicare for all type system, a move away from flatter tax rates, and public support for higher education are identified as "Socialists". Maybe a few college kids wearing Che t-shirts are wanting to seize private business but it's a very uncommon position.

Would you say the people with those three main political goals are worse than white supremacists?

I also find it fascinating that you don't see that the Armed Forces is set up in a socialistic manner but it isn't important.

And now my mutual fund is in the red for the year. Thanks Trump!

The funny thing is, that if this had been the Obama administration, we'd have had a tweet out from him about how SA had been basically responsible for financing and doing 9/11 and now we're completely giving up the sovereignty of the country so Obama can do a little business with a bunch of terrorist criminals, and how that makes him a traitor and in need of impeachment.

It was only 50 years ago where Nixon (and many other R's) floated the very same idea, where the social safety net was important and where they remembered just how important the government was at helping lift people out of poverty. Just watching the 80's doc (CNN) episode about Reagan, reminded us that he raised taxes multiple times (because the deficit spending was out of control), put 2 pro-choice judges on the supreme court and legalized a few million immigrants. Today's Republican party has gone down the Goldwater/McCarthy road to radical conservative values and mainstreamed them. The left isn't really all that radical right now. Any one of them would have been very much a normal political commodity a few decades ago.



We see Republican controlled state houses voting to eliminate powers of governors as they lose power, in order to keep control. Republican lead efforts to squash voter participation by using vague reasons for unregistering voters without telling them, closing polling places in poor, or minority served areas. Republican lead efforts to continue to marginalize minority groups, from women, to immigrants, to the LGBTQ community. They pit the middle class against the poor to maintain power, by scaring them into believing that the the poor are a threat and only aligning with the powerful can they maintain their place. The middle class acts as a group fighting for the little they have, proud that they have it, and fearful (because many have lost everything) they might be next, so they go along.

It's not about everyone being equal, it's about providing as equal as possible, a footing, where anyone can succeed with enough effort. One side recognizes that as it is right now, the playing field is heavily tilted toward one side, whereas the other says that everyone is already doing good enough and if you take away the opportunity from the rich people the unwashed masses will end up breaking everything. It's a very aristocratic view, much the way the Jeffersons and Madison's of the world saw it. There were enough groups that founded the US that we can recognize that there were multiple visions of what the US was. They conflicted then as they do now, but they were all the visions of the founders.

I would respectfully suggest that your stated opinion is not backed up by the data. Medicare for all is very popular no matter who you ask. 70% of all Americans and 85% of Democrats in the latest poll I found. Meanwhile the other one showed 50% of Democrats - a much smaller number - specifically chose socialism over capitalism. I selected that poll for a reason, as mentioned previously there are other ones out there about whether we should spend more on the public good in various policy areas. It's pretty clear from the difference in the poll numbers that respondents are not, in fact, equating socialism with these things.


No, I don't know any of them and couldn't make a judgment on who is worse. I think you are probably getting at which set of views I find more objectionable, in which case I would say those of the white supremacists. I agree with the policy goals as laid out myself, though I'd expect differences would be uncovered if we dug deeper. I do still maintain that there are far more, and it's not remotely close, pro-socialist than pro-white supremacist people in the United States, which is why I think they are more dangerous. Ever since Charlottesville those people have been shouted down pretty much everywhere they tried to go and protest. People are engaged and opposing them. There are far, far fewer in favor than against, and while they aren't a total non-concern they don't deserve nearly the worry that's been expressed IMO.

.02.

It’s a good job the increased Republican control of the Senate means that they will will blindly accept anything Trump edicts. Doh!

At least there appears to be some sense of what is right lurking somewhere in the Senate:
Trump asked to determine Saudi prince's 'role' in Khashoggi murder - BBC News

Speaking as someone with a fairly diverse set of friends - while White Supremecists might not be in vogue racism has definitely raised far more of a head since Trump took power and I've seen and heard about far more offensive racist statements being inflicted on people in the last two years than I had in nearly a decade previously.

When I first moved to the US around 15 years ago I was shocked at how backward it was in terms of racism in Florida, it gradually improved (or I got used to it, probably a bit of both) - but today I believe its back to worse than it was before I moved here ... some is undoubtably my perception of things through personal events, but some is just a general rise in intolerance of people who are 'other' imho.

PS - Out of interest what do you mean by 'socialist' - people who like the idea of a nationalised healthcare system where people are treated regardless of income or the literal definition of it? ...

Trump still doesn’t understand how the US Govt works. Openly criticizing the Chief Justice now.

And Republicans will stand by and watch...

He doesn't care to know. He maintains his popularity with his base when he tweets out this nonsense. The average Trump voter would rather he stand up to the libs than actually be intelligent and knowledgeable.

BS, I'm also wondering which politicians you consider to be a Socialist? Is Bernie Sanders? How about AOC? The threshold that I've seen from the right has been very low up until this conversation. For example, I saw Ted Cruz refer to Beto O'Rourke as a Socialist multiple times.

Even if you don't consider Trump to be a white supremacist, would agree that Steve King is?

I don't know the number of legitimate socialists and legitimate white supremacists in this country.

I do know an actual socialist has no chance of being elected President (let alone any major office). A white supremacist was just elected President.

I don't think raw numbers is a fair comparison of threat in the first place. There's a million-fold more toddlers than serial killers in this country, that doesn't make them a bigger threat to your life.

Likewise, if you're a white individual then the personal threat presented by white supremacists is obviously a little more questionable, which can distort perspectives. I certainly don't think any person of color would characterize the growth of white supremacy and racial violence in the 21st century as overblown or not worthy worrying about, even if its rise were only in perception.

On the racism front - had an Uber driver say he was surprised about where I lived because he doesn't normally do runs in my area ... reason being he was verbally (and nearly physically) abused by a racist when he went for a pickup near my neighbourhood ... its somewhat rural and very red politically in my neck of the woods, to the extent one of my neighbours stopped talking to me for a while because she felt 'attacked' because I put up a sign which said "Everyone is welcome here" in several different languages ...

She somehow decided this was an attack on her, I have explained to her since that no it wasn't anything to do with her - more a reassurance to one of my friends who is Iranian and studying for their Phd here that I am supportive of them.

(these are the sorts of things which have lead me to think things have become far worse in Florida than prior to Trump being elected)

Don't know if anyone is watching the MAcy Day Parade, but man, some people are likely freaking out right now after the performance from Prom

I don't understand why Medicare for some is okay, but Medicare for all is radical socialism.

Get your damn government hands off my Medicare!

Why?

Two girls kissing at the end of the performance.

Didn't Will and Grace do that like a decade ago?

In other news, it’s cold outside so climate change isn’t real.

In other, other news, it’s nighttime the sun doesn’t exist.

Thing is, and you know this obviously, with the target audience (his "base") this is a 100% effective talking point. He says this on the risers at one of his rallies, and he will get screams of delight and agreement. That's just what politics has become now.

We've run out of insults and analogies to describe this guy. Con man, carnival barker, and aspiring fascist are, unbelievably, not even negative enough to fully characterize this guy.

Not thanksgiving morning during wholesome family entertainment.

I used to think he was a con man, but I've come to believe that he actually thinks what he says is true and makes sense, which is far more dangerous in my opinion.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind. When you consistently speak fiction as fact and vice versa the line between them becomes so blurred that one begins to lose sight of where it really is.

There was an ad for Parkinson's Medication on tv today, and I really felt like it really seemed like they were just talking about trump. No offense to anyone with Parkinson's that they would be lumped into that basket though.

Truth.


I don't know enough about AOC - I agree with those who say it's ridiculous all the hand-wringing being done about her when she hasn't taken office yet. Particularly considering Sanders, who I think is the best example. Yes, he's a socialist. Don't have to take my word for it, he's been calling himself one for 30 years. More specifically, he's defined it in terms of economic democracy - i.e. equality of outcome - going so far to say that political democracy is basically worthless without it. Again his words not mine.

As far as Steve King is concerned, I think he probably is a white supremacist based on the documented statements I've read about, though I don't know enough about him to be sure. I know it's not the way most people do things these days, but I don't pay a great deal of attention to people like him one way or the other. I.e, I worry a lot more about who represents me - and I don't live in Iowa - and try to let other people worry about who represents them. So for me, it's about the president, or in the last election Sen. Stabenow, Gov. Whitmer, etc. in Michigan.


See: Sen. Bernie Sanders(VT), a competitive runner-up for Democratic nominee for president, 2016. See also: the global trend of political power going to the extremes and away from the middle - Brazil and Germany being the most recent examples.


The literal definition of it, under which the United States for example is a primarily capitalist system with some socialist elements, and many European countries by comparison are the reverse; some capitalism is still involved, but primarily socialist. A nationalized healthcare system such as you described would probably be socialist in nature - I don't know of an example of another way to fund it without that being the case. .

I think Bernie is a good case for why a socialist isn't winning a Presidential election any time soon.

And the definition of democratic socialism that we see in AOC and Bernie really gets twisted by the right. It's not the literal definition of socialism. That's not happening here and no one that I've seen with any serious national political aspirations is pushing for that.

This was my point all along. The Democrats surveyed favoring Socialism are viewing themselves as supporters of the Sanders-led left wing. Very, very few are advocating for a South American style Socialist government take over of private enterprise. By the way, he refers to himself as a Democratic Socialist.

The equality of outcome statement sounds like some awful Ben Shaprio speech. I seriously doubt you can find a statement from Sanders saying he's in favor of equality of outcome. He just wants to reduce income inequality - the string pullers on the right are going to get twitchy when they hear that. He's in favor of a $15 minimum wage, right? How can you be in favor of a minimum wage yet advocate for equality of outcome. That makes no sense.

I think the number of people advocating for full blown socialism are greater than you think. Many think countries like Venezuela would be a paradise except that the CIA keeps them down. And a Democratic Socialist is still a Socialist.

Literally the dictionary definition of socialism is collective ownership of the means of production.


Without actually using the words equality of outcome, he could hardly make it more clear. This is literally what the phrase economic democracy means; that all people are made equal economically, not just politically. That's what he says in this quote as well.


Aside from the fact that there's no other logical way to read quotes like the above, he's a pragmatic politician You take what you can get if you can't get everything you want. Politicians of every stripe do this on a wide range of issues. A big increase in the minimum wage is a more equal outcome than what we have now, therefore it's a big step in the right direction. He's also praised nations like Denmark that are more socialist than capitalist specifically for being so. Etc.


Why? He wasn't far from being nominated and polling at the time showed him doing about as well as Hillary vis a vis Trump. It's not as if he was laughed off the stage.


Yes it is, actually:


In many of the countries that Sanders and those who agree with him ideologically praise, overall tax rates are significantly above 50%. By definition, that makes them more socialist than capitalist - the government controls the majority of the economy. Calling these countries socialist isn't any wronger than calling the US a capitalist one just because some of the economy is still controlled by the collective and we have some socialistic elements. It's an accurate description of what the primary, not exclusive, basis for the economy is. If one says 'completely socialist' or '100% socialist' etc., then yeah that's wrong - but that's not what most people who use the terms are out there saying.

In this article that you used, here's a better quote:
14 things Bernie Sanders has said about socialism - POLITICO

"4. In an interview with Catherine Alison Hill for a master’s thesis she wrote at Cornell in 1989: “Socialism has a lot of different messages to different people. I think the issue of socialist ideology and what that meant or means is not terribly important. I think the positive of it is that it indicates to people that I am not a conventional politician. If they are not happy with the status quo, then that is a positive thing. The negative of it obviously is that there are people who equate it with totalitarianism and the Soviet Union.”

It pretty much describes this conversation perfectly.

Economic democracy just means seeing some decentralization in the economy. More businesses operating as co-ops. Workers having a bigger say through unions. And the limiting of monopolies.

Right now a handful of companies and individuals dictate how the country is run.

I mean I don't agree with a lot of the stuff he says but I don't see him calling for seizing companies or any of that stuff.

Call me crazy, but I feel like the threat of socialist politicians is that if they are elected en masse over the course of many years, history shows they *might* serve to effect systematic changes that would result in a fractional reduction of your take home income, based on hypotheticals and assumptions of things that have never actually occurred in the modern history of this country. Whereas if you're a person of color (or even an adjacent supporter/protestor), a white supremacist might stab you to death tomorrow, or at the very least yell racial slurs at your children on a daily basis, based on a long, factual demonstrable history of unchecked white supremacist violence and speech in America. Personally, I find the distinction incredibly easy to make, but I suppose your mileage may vary.

Sounds like BS is talking more about communism rather than socialism. Socialism involves partial state ownership to regulate equality (edit: or reduce inequality), communism is full blown equality of ownership.

Do you know the difference between a Communist and a Socialist? | The Independent

I think cherry picking Bernie's most extreme quotes and then transferring those beliefs onto the entire base of Americans with even the slightest socialist leanings (having already been defined with the broadest brush possible) is disingenuous regardless of how define Bernie's personal politics.

To wit, the conservative posters on this site have many times stated that this board leans heavy liberal, but I would be surprised if you could find even a single post in the entire history of this board advocating for the total public ownership of private enterprise. On the other hand, I can recall multiple posts predicting Barack Obama's inevitable assassination, just off the top of my head, but again I suppose your mileage may vary.

Except it doesn't. Not once did I call Sanders a communist or equate him with them. I do agree with Marx that communism is the natural endpoint of socialist systems, but Sanders has never advocated for communism that I am aware of, and I didn't come within a thousand miles of accusing him of that.


No it doesn't. I mean again, this is just literal definition time. It doesn't fit what Sanders said, when he equated it to political democracy which is absolute equality; 1 person 1 vote. The term simply doesn't fit if you don't have collective ownership of the economy. I mean there are two words in the phrase. Those words aren't anti-trust or collective bargaining.


The irony drips. The slightest socialist leanings? Talk about being disingenous. As mentioned multiple times already, America has a number of socialist policies already implemented. A lot of them nobody runs around screaming about. I've also already said I support a lot of those items. I don't know a single decision-maker who can accurately be said NOT to have 'slightest socialist leanings', and I'm not the one redefining socialism here. That belongs to people who keep implying that if you're not talking Venezuela, you're not really talking about socialism. I've limited my assessment to those who it really belongs to; those who, Sanders being merely the most famous one of them in modern America, want an expansion of government control of the economy to the point where it is more public-controlled than private-controlled.

I'm not trying to cherry-pick Sanders either. I want to represent his views fairly, despite the absolutely false accusation that a couple people have made in which I'm making him into a Stalinist. He isn't, and I haven't said so. But this whole 'he's just a democratic socialist, not a real one' thing is just silly.

** He's been a long-standing proponent of Eugene Debs, Socialist Party candidate for President in the early 20th century. In his own words, Sanders called Debs a radical socialist and revolutionary, and in a glowing not insulting sense.

** He's repeatedly flat-out just called himself a socialist.

** Endorsements of Finland, Sweden, Denmark etc. as models for the USA to follow are all over the place.



Of course no matter how many quotes I produce people will still throw out the idea that I'm being extreme. But if you're really interested in what he thinks and not shooting the messenger, the first one here comes from a statement that came from his own official senate website. Sanders, and many others, use the terms socialism and democratic socialism interchangeably - which really indicates what democratic socialism actually means.


Second time someone's made this point, which I think is just a disconnect. I've been comparing things based on the political realm. I think the chance of a random white supremacist committing an act of violence is indeed much higher than a socialist doing so; I'm talking about the danger of a political movement enacting policy change that impacts the entire country. I mean, since we don't jail people for beliefs last I checked, the way to deal with people who are dangerous in the sense of individual violence is via law enforcement once they've crossed the line.

FWIW, see below discussion on what Bernie is.

From what I've read, he's not a true socialist but has socialist leanings. So maybe on a scale of 1-10, he's a 7-8.

Political positions of Bernie Sanders - Wikipedia

Yes it does. Seriously, what is with this "literal definition time" where you don't actually use the literal definitions? Democracy is about each person getting a vote, which results in DIFFERENT OUTCOMES depending on how people vote. This is an incredible missing the point of what economic democracy actually means.

Here is more reading:
Economic democracy - Wikipedia


And the wiki article goes into detail about how different strands have different opinions, from full scale control of the means of production, to merely increasing the power of unions and (like Germany) mandating they get a voice at the Board of Directors.

I respect your fairmindedness and intelligence considerably. I just don't get this though. Equality of outcome doesn't mean everyone must use their power the same way. When used in economic terms, literally nobody thinks it means that everyone must have the same car, live in the same city, buy the same food, have similar/identical houses, etc. It's about equalizing the power and then letting people choose how they use it. I am using the literal definition here, I specifically said 'collective ownership of the economy' in what you quoted. I.e., the economy is run by decisions of the people, not those of corporations and so on.

For crying out loud, it was just a couple weeks ago, if that, when we had a discussion about the US Senate and how undemocratic it is. And I agreed then, and I agree now. More importantly, nobody tried to argue that it wasn't. Everyone was on-board with that being what democracy means, as they should have been, because it does. The Senate is a feature of a constitutional republic, not a democracy. But it's a lot more democratic than a system in which you merely have stronger unions or a voice on the Board. So seriously, and without trying to be pedantic, what the heck is democracy then if it means equal power to all people in terms of a legislature but it doesn't mean that at all in the economy? Is there some decoder ring or guidebook I can consult so I know when words don't actually mean what they mean, but they mean something completely different just because it's more fashionable to call them that these days, with no guarantee whatsoever they will still mean that five minutes from now? I must be behind the curve, because I thought that was what the dictionary was for, and that by combining the terms 'economic' and 'democracy' I could arrive at the meaning of economic democracy. I don't know what else to call this situation but Orwellian.

So much winning: NY Supreme Court denies Trump Foundations attempts to dismiss, lawsuit will continue. Tweet about leftist judges in 3..2...1...

Maybe he felt the need to proclaim his thankfulness for his own accomplishments as President since so few - relatively - of his fellow citizens are fans of what he's done. Narcissism and lack of dignity on parade. I continue to hope he eventually turns the page and improves, but that's exceedingly unlikely unfortunately.

Kudos to Fox News for doing the right thing.

I watched the replay and it was an immediate response and apology. Hopefully this Paulina will be blacklisted going forward.

Fox News Apologizes For Guest Who Likened Hillary Clinton To ‘Herpes’ | HuffPost

Democracy literally means power or rule of the people. By adding more input by the workers of a corporation, through increased union representation or voices of the workers on the Board of Directors, it increases the rule of those corporations by the majority of the people who work for those corporations. That there be more democracy in the economy. You don't need full collective ownership of the means of production in order to move towards economic democracy. Perhaps if you wanted "pure" economic democracy, but we can also say similar things about pure capitalism vs. the pragmatic and more moderate sorts.

Democratic elections are, IMO, the dictionary definition of the term equality of opportunity, but not equality of outcome (and the later becomes especially obvious if you are a big supporter of a third party). You all have equal opportunities to vote (well, sometimes..) but the outcomes are vastly different based on other people decide to vote.

In the same way, in systems that promote more economic democracy, the workers have greater opportunities to be heard in the governance of corporations, but that doesn't mean everyone ends up gets the same pay (for instance).

I really don't understand why this is so difficult to grasp and how it doesn't correspond to basic dictionary definitions of these terms.

I think you've managed to set up a big ole strawman disconnected from historical usage of the term and you simply can't move from this strawman you've created even in the face of people telling you that your strawman is incorrect.

And if you believe that to be an Orwellian change of definitions, then man, the Republic that is the US being called a Democracy all over the place must really rile you up.

For example, here is a Forbes article from 2016 by John Harvey, a Professor of Economics at Texas Christian University, shedding perhaps a bit more light on what democracy or democratic may mean in the context of an economy (and no, it doesn't automatically mean 'one person one share'):

Bernie Sanders As A Democratic Capitalist

Yes it does, because it is a Republic and the difference is more than semantic; the priorities in the two systems are not at all the same in many respects; it's not a trivial or merely surface-level distinction. Re; your description of democracy, would you then say that the entire board was wrong in describing elections for the US Senate as undemocratic?


Thanks for stating this as clearly as you have here. All I can say is I do not at all understand why no difference is seen between equality of power and sameness in how that power is used, two very different concepts. I don't think I can fruitfully go any further with that.

I think you are basically being very, very pedantic about these definitions and using them in ways that are not used in real world parlance. After all, by the literal letter of the word, there has never been a democracy in the history of the world (the Athenian democracy excluded lots of folks). And a procedure can be undemocratic and still be part of a Democracy (in addition to the EC and Senate in the US, the Athenian restrictions of citizenship and only men could vote in the Assembly were undemocratic limitations in the first Democracy).

Major Trump administration climate report says damages are 'intensifying across the country' - Los Angeles Times

Now where did the administration put that rug to sweep this under?

And yet those people I rub shoulders with and occasionally discuss politics with have no issue with calling the USA a republic. Most of them are pretty apathetic and just think our government is corrupt and stop there without any real abiding political interest or ideology, but they still don't object to 'my' definition of republic/democracy as one example, some of them having known the difference themselves since taking social studies in early high school. I find that the variability in language is much more pronounced among established elites.

I just want to pull this out. I'm not sure where you're getting your info, but the 2015 OECD stats don't have a single country with taxation over 50% of GDP.

That's true on what OECD measures, which is income tax. For example, 36% in Denmark, 43% in Sweden. Both countries also have a 25% VAT which is not taken into account by the OECD because it isn't what they are trying to calculate, and so on.

The chart I looked at claimed to be measuring all taxation as a percentage of GDP.

Link? I can't find any OECD measure like that, though admittedly I don't spend a lot of time reviewing their data.

You can find a number of different charts by searching tax as a percentage of GDP OECD. The definition of total tax revenue is:

Having looked at that more, it seems there is a disconnect at some level - I'm not sure where it is, I don't know the technical of economics well enough on that score - between tax revenue and government revenue. OECD's figures for the latter are higher. Regardless of that, the 2015 set which does seem to the be most recent complete one lists the following nations as having government spending at 50% or higher of GDP:

Austria
Belgium
Denmark
Finland
France
Greece
Hungary
Italy

Numbers are slightly lower than what I've read elsewhere, and I'm not sure why that is but I have no reason not to conclude that OECD is accurate and that some nations - Sweden in particular - are less socialized than I thought.

Just because spendng is more than 50% doesn’t mean taxation is over 50%. The vast majority of nations run budget deficits

My understanding falls about where the World Bank credit comes from to enable these deficits: governments usually project reducing the rate of increase of GDP as a victory, rather than reducing the deficit itself, which suggests papering over the cracks, refinancing, or similar.

Which in turn are short term measures, and can maybe help explain Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Italy, etc (I’m sure there will be other examples elsewhere in the world, they’re just the ones I am more aware of given my location)

I didn't read BS quote on "overall tax rates are significantly above 50%" as a % of GDP measure.

Below is an article with an analysis.

http://www.institutmolinari.org/IMG/...en-eu-2017.pdf

For the list of countries discussed so far, there is a breakdown on page 8. For "Real Tax Rate", the definition is

(Social Security Contributions + Income Tax + VAT ) / Real Gross Salary

Austria - 54.28%
Belgium - 56.74%
Denmark - 41.41%
Finland - 46.36%
France - 57.41%
Greece - 52.10%
Hungary - 50.88%
Italy - 51.56%
Sweden - 47.40%

So bottom line - many do have over 50+%, many do have in 40+% range.

That's a little apples to oranges. I was using national taxation as a percentage of GDP while your study looks at taxation on one worker's income level.

And here's what started this:

That's like arguing temperature versus feels like. I don't really care if the temperature is 28, if it feels like 10, it's frickin' 10.

The original point though was how much of the economy is controlled collectively. Taxation compared to GDP doesn't measure that either, because it's comparing something on opposite sides of the balance sheet so that's apples to oranges as well. Government deficit spending as cited by AlexB contributes to increasing GDP - I didn't use the GDP comparison partly for that reason. But if we want to use GDP, then total government spending is the most relevant thing to compare it to.

I'm not arguing for or against any method as I don't think any of these measurements shows how much or little socialism there is. I was simply correcting your point about several countries being taxed over 50% and the only way to measure that would be taxation as a percentage of GDP.

edit: For example, China has taxation at about 20% of GDP and spending at about 32% of GDP, while the USA is 26% and 36%. I don't think many would argue the US is much more socialist than China.

It's not the case that it's the only way to measure it though, as I pointed out. Taxation/GDP is a revenue to spending comparison, which is always going to be inherently flawed. Measures such as Edward64's link is more to the point in that case.

But that's just one specific income.

Yeah, in this case it seems like all the arguing and links have just confirmed that the 'sniff test' is probably more effective than any individual chart or particular tax formula.

That said, I feel like the truth that gets reinforced from this conversation is that when American conservatives talk about "Socialism" they are referring almost exclusively to a relatively high tax rate (and the things that lead you there), as opposed to any kind of specific governmental/economic policy. Defining what does and doesn't comprise socialism in other countries is a sizable red herring if everyone knows we're just talking about relatively higher taxes here.

You are moving goalposts (again). Do those people have any issue with people calling the US a Democracy? Because your issue is trying to redefine the popular definition of Democracy, not whether or not people are fine if someone calls it a Republic (which is a more exact definition). In my experience, it's usually the elites or the well-off that go "Actually the US is a Republic, not a Democracy" (generally to defend some undemocratic practice), whereas most regular people refer to the US as a Democracy. Generally it seems to be the academic elites that like the rigid definitions (for instance in the capitalism/socialism definitions) while the regular people define terms in ways that make the most sense (though that gets somewhat maddening as socialism can be defined in like 10 different ways depending on the people you are dealing with - as thesloppy refers to above about how some see socialism as equaling higher taxes). Some rigidity in definitions is ok, but when it becomes too rigid that nothing can fit it, then it becomes farcical.

TBH I sense both sides are trying to explain their POV and there are nuances that are being missed.

You guys are too cerebral for me but this is how one common person (e.g. me) looks at it. Hope it helps.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.a7468074d8d6

Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie have a new book coming out Tuesday and the Washington Post got an advance copy. I'm sure it was going to be full of remorse and apology for their views on Trump...uh no chance in hell. It's called Trump's Enemies: How the Deep State is undermining the Presidency, and its full of every far-right conspiracy theory out there. I'm sure we'll be seeing it in Trump's tweets too:


https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...=.b316041a1dcb


Corey was just on CNN this week too-wasn't talking about the book, but clearly there are some Trump supporters who should not be on mainstream media ever again.

I'll never understand why CNN keeps booking guests that have signed Trump's NDA.

I completely agree with that definition, fwiw.

This is a good article, thanks for posting.

I think the issue that some people have is that the representative democracy isn't representing everyone equally. The Senate for instance is probably the most glaring one. Wyoming has one Senator for every 290,000 people. Texas has one Senator for every 14 million.

Then you have gerrymandering which aims to unfairly distribute representation in the House. Both parties do it and it should be something that is abolished.

Then of course you have Washington DC which despite having a larger population than Vermont and Wyoming, has zero representation in the House and Senate. A bit of a disgrace for a country that's freedom centered around no taxation without representation.

When comparing tax rates between countries, you have to factor in the benefits received.

For instance, many of those high tax countries have national health care. In this country 10% of our income goes toward health care. So add that 10% on to your current tax rate.

Then you have to take the employer contribution from payroll taxes. That's another 7.65%.

Now factor in how much you're paying in property taxes each year. How much sales tax you pay. When all is said and done, I bet most middle class people are paying around 50% of their income to taxes.

Admittedly tough to compare apples-to-apples between US and EU countries above.

For your 10% healthcare example, the US government does "subsidize" our healthcare by allowing corporations/us take tax deductions for contribution of healthcare costs. It's obviously not as straight forward EU but there is some and no idea how to measure the true delta.

For the employer payroll tax contribution, the above article did not factor that into their equation either for employees. I would not be surprised if EU employer portion was significantly higher than 7.65%. Same for property tax.

Sales tax comment is fair. GA sales tax is 4% which would be roughly equivalent to the VAT.

My postulates in re: to "benefits" are:

1) EU countries all-in taxes to employees are much higher than the US
2) EU countries all-in taxes to employers are much higher than the US
3) EU do provide "better" services (e.g. healthcare, education) with the taxes, and they provide "worse" services (e.g. paid days off, difficulty in firing employees)
4) US is still the better country warts and all (I'm obviously biased), there are more pros than cons

UK employer contributions are 13.8% for reference