Quote: (06-09-2017 11:42 AM)Quintus Curtius Wrote:
What I said was very clear: I said that the root cause of most of the social and racial antagonisms in the US today is due to the tremendous and growing income disparities between rich and poor. I'm saying that the failure of the elites in the US to create and maintain a just society for all of us is the root cause of most of our problems.
Yes, and your proposed solutions for these problems are things like single-payer healthcare and subsidized education, i.e., government welfare programs.
So, if we gave the poor more welfare, we would rectify the "social and racial antagonisms", e.g. taking down and vandalizing statues, which are the specific antagonisms being discussed in this thread.
I'm not distorting anything you're saying, I'm simply cutting through the rhetoric to point out exactly what you're prescribing, which is solving our social problems through more government spending and welfare.
Of course there are serious problems among the lower and middle classes in America. Almost everyone on this forum has understood this for years.
Where we disagree is in our solutions to the problem. You call for more government programs and spending, while people like myself call for more jobs, less outsourcing, less immigration, less wasteful spending, etc.
Of course we need healthcare and education reform.
But for one, there are plenty of "universal" systems that are more politically and financially feasible in the US than what places like Canada and Western Europe/Scandinavia have, e.g., the Singaporean-style system that Trump was proposing during the campaign.
And two, free healthcare and education aren't going to magically solve all our problems, especially considering that so much of our societal and cultural problems are a direct result of what is taught in the festering cesspools also known as American "universities".
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What I said was that arguing over old statues is a distraction from the real issues that affect people today. I'm saying that the plutocrats want us all to be fighting about bullshit that doesn't matter, while they continue to disenfranchise all of us.
"Old statues" are part of our culture, our identity, our heritage. Did you grow up in the American South?
And not so coincidentally, it's been collectivist, socialist regimes that have destroyed cultural artifacts in almost every region of the world over the last 150 years, from China to Cambodia to Russia to Romania to Cuba.
So, yes, we should be concerned with efforts to destroy our national history, as these kinds of actions have historically preceded massive amounts of bloodshed and persecution.
I don't know how many times and in how many countries this script has to play out before people get the picture.
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I'm also saying a basic truth: other Western countries invest far more in their citizens than the US does. In Canada, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, there is a social safety net, and subsidized education.
Yes, and I'm also stating some basic truths, which include the fact that the regions you mention:
- Have huge amounts of debt
- Spend a fraction of what the US does on defense
- Spend a fraction of what the US does on medical research
- Are more homogenous than the US
- Have massive social and racial problems of their own
In short, despite piggybacking on the US' military and healthcare industry, these countries still can't even support their own welfare states.
These are the very basic truths that you are ignoring. I did not paint your claims as socialist fantasies because I'm inherently opposed to things like healthcare or education reform; I did so based on your view that more government spending and programs would magically fix all of our problems, despite the fact that the countries you're citing as examples have enormous financial and social problems of their own.
Your argument falls apart when we look at the actual social and political climate around the world.
Western Europe is plagued by terrorism and race-related violence, while populism is on the rise. Why does WE continue to experience "social and racial antagonisms" despite their generous welfare states (and their far-reaching police states, that control political discussion)? Why are so many Europeans unhappy with their government if their governments are so "good" to them?
Meanwhile, China, which specializes in cronyism and treats their poor worse than nearly any country on Earth, is not currently experiencing the same "social and racial antagonisms" that we see in the West.
Why? If your hypothesis were true, surely a country like China would be going through a "Cultural Revolution" now, rather than in the '70s. And surely things would be all peachy in Western Europe.
Not to mention the fact that the same welfare state you praise could be considered directly responsible for the breakdowns in the familial and social structures we're seeing throughout the West.