Should Bernie Sanders run for President in 2020

@HoraceGreenley Uh...buddy are you forgetting that every democratic socialist country in the world is currently doing great?

You call that a failed experiment?

@BlueMetalChick Yes.
1. Democratic Socialist states are "Statists", i.e
A capitalism/socialism hybrid.
2. These countries are not doing great.
3. It's the capitalism part that keeps them afloat

@HoraceGreenley Last I checked, Finland, France, Denmark, Japan, and Iceland are all doing pretty good.

No, it's not the "capitalism that keeps them afloat." If that were true, then an entirely capitalist nation like America would be doing the best, and America is doing pretty bad currently.

@BlueMetalChick America was not doing great because Obama was pushing us toward socialism.

Iceland is broke. With 300 people, who would notice?

France is so desperate for economic development they are starting to copy America.

Japan has an economy that has been stagnant for 25+ years, with national debt of 240% GDP. With their low birth rate, their economy will shrink without immigration, which they don't allow.

Finland and Denmark are nice places, but boring with stagnant economies.

@HoraceGreenley Obama?! Are you daft? Obama didn't have a socialist bone in his fucking body.

Iceland is broke yet still manages to afford healthcare, education, infrastructure, and a living wage for its inhabitants. Huh, sounds horrible.

Japan's economy is anything but "stagnant." Not to mention the US owes them a few trillion dollars.

If Finland and Denmark are "stagnant" then stagnant must be awesome. Unless you hate having access to healthcare and education and you think a country's roads and bridges and power grid should all be antiquated and the citizens should pay high taxes, almost all of which go towards bailing out big companies and dropping bombs on everyone else.

@BlueMetalChick Obama admitted it.

@HoraceGreenley Name a single socialist policy of Obama's. Just one.

@BlueMetalChick Obamacare

@HoraceGreenley You're...you're joking, right?

You think Obamacare is socialist? A system that not only accepts, but DEPENDS on privatized health insurance?

You do realize that ending the privatization of insurance is like...one of the main goals of modern socialism, yes? Obamacare is inherently opposed to any socialistic view of healthcare. Even a public option is on shaky ground for being called "socialist."

@BlueMetalChick Obama admitted that he wanted the US to be like a Western European Social Democracy.

Saying Obama does not have a Socialist bone in his body and that Obamacare isn't socialism is absurd.

I am sorry but you have no credibility.

@HoraceGreenley [quote]Saying Obama does not have a Socialist bone in his body and that Obamacare isn't socialism is absurd.[/quote]
No it's not absurd, it's correct. Obamacare is not a socialist healthcare plan. It's a private insurance market. All flavors of socialism reject private insurance. Look I dunno what to tell you, you can't hedge this one out. Obamacare is not socialist. Whether Obama WANTED it to be socialist or not is a pointless argument because neither you nor I can read Barack Obama's mind and tell what he's thinking.

I am sorry but you have no credibility.

@BlueMetalChick ObamaCare drove out all the private payers. It was only a matter of time before only MediCare would provide healthcare to the people in the program. That was the intent from the beginning.

Was it classic/textbook socialism? No, but it was headed down that road and that's enough for me to classify it as such.

Wait until you start paying for health insurance.

@HoraceGreenley [quote]ObamaCare drove out all the private payers.[/quote]
Do you even live in America? Private health insurance is one of the biggest and wealthiest markets in the entire country. Private payers were not driven out by anything. Medicare is overwhelmingly popular, but it keeps getting cut.

[quote]Was it classic/textbook socialism? No, but it was headed down that road and that's enough for me to classify it as such.[/quote]
If it was "headed down that road" then why did it never come anywhere close to achieving that goal? That's what I have to ask when people say these kinds of things. "The goal of Obamacare was socialistic health insurance." Then why did Obamacare not achieve that or even try to achieve that in almost a decade?

[quote]Wait until you start paying for health insurance.[/quote]
I DO pay for health insurance. And it sucks. It's a predatory institution with a perverse incentive. The more care the provider denies to the customer, the more money they make. Meaning they profit off of denying their product to their buyer.

@BlueMetalChick ObamaCare drove out the private payers for the ObamaCare program, not healthcare in general.

@HoraceGreenley And? That doesn't have an effect of private for-profit health insurance companies. As long as those companies exist, the system is not socialistic. The softest you could argue would be a public option, which is mildly socialist. Obamacare subsidized Americans to buy insurance, which is left of what Bush's "free market" system was, but it's nowhere near being socialist.

@BlueMetalChick The program itself is "socialism" and I don't want to be within 1,000,000 miles of that shit.

@HoraceGreenley No the program itself is not socialism. You know what's socialism? Single-payer healthcare. That's socialism. When healthcare is funded by people's tax money. That's socialism. And it's a terrible idea if you like having healthcare and saving money, which are two things that America seems to hate. After all, we have FREEDOMS, which includes the freedom to die from a lack of access to basic medicine.

@BlueMetalChick ObamaCare was funded with taxpayer money

@HoraceGreenley Socialism is just capitalism with funding set aside for public good, primarily to protect the vulnerable as they are the ones who tend to have the most difficulty affording the services funded. Unbridled capitalism would be brutal and all 'capitalist' societies are socialist to some degree. Even America has some unemployment and health protections for people, Medicaid and, I believe a public school education system. So it's not a question of whether societies include elements of socialism; it's to what degree.

@HoraceGreenley The subsidies were but the health insurance itself was not.

@fazer1k Socialism, in its democratic form, is essentially a capitalist consumer market but with a nationalized non-capitalist public sector for things that are considered bad to be privatized, e.g. school systems, healthcare, infrastructure, prisons, etc.

@fazer1k
socialism - a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

Slept through Econ 101 did you?

@HoraceGreenley ...did you just provide a definition that agreed completely with the person you responded to, and then call him wrong?

Slept through 4th grade English class did you?

@HoraceGreenley That's communism. Slept through Econ 101 did you?

@BlueMetalChick "The subsidies were but the health insurance itself was not."

do you want to stick with that story or try something else?