4383

Pretty much. It’s what made me stop calling myself conservative, even if I tend to agree with a lot of their historically stated ideals. The thing is, they never even try to live up to those ideals like 90% of the time. Nowadays they don’t even pretend to have ever supported them and are fine with being the party of open racism.

4384

You know what broke the Democratic party (~1000 legislative seats lost, Democrats only control 13 states. yada yada), it is the Democrats insistent that we nationalize everything. Plus a misguided belief that if we America would only be more like Scandinavia everything would be so much better.

Even if that was true, America is nothing like Scandinavia countries. Take your favorite Denmark. If Denmark was a state it would be 21st in population (5.8 million) and 42nd in size. But where it would rank #1 is homogeneity. 87% of the population of Denmark is ethnic Danes and the next biggest group is Turk at whopping 1.1% No US state even comes close have a shared, culture, values, and history. All of Scandinavia only has a population of 21 million, about as much as Florida, and the US has 1/2 as many folks of Scandinavian descent as live in Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland.

So yes, if you want to turn America into some lily white country, then let’s go ahead and adopt all the wonderful social policy of your favorite Scandinavian country, and hell lets do what Donald Trump wants and encourage all the nice Norweigns to move here. But I’m pretty sure the reason these countries governments work is that the countries are filled with all these lovely, peaceful, educated people, who’ve lived in relative harmony for centuries.

But that’s not America outside a few Danish sized North Eastern states, (NH, VT, ME) that are also 95%+ white, and generally have pretty functional government, and even experiment with socialist medicine and such.

One of the lesson that us Neocons learned that century, is that even if we believe that self-determination and freedom of expression are universal values, lots of the world has different values and social structures so trying to impose Jeffersonian Democracy in a place like Afghanistan is damn near impossible. Turning America into Sweden is equally doomed.

Now that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be trying new things. I just find it bizzare that people would look to Netherlands for examples of it is good or bad thing rather than Nevada and Colorada for prostitution and pot.
The states in the US are definitely diverse but Colorado is culturally much closer to California or Arkansas than either is to the Netherlands. More over things like doctors and nurses pay, hospital design, and drugs distribution are very similar between the states and not all similar to other countries.

Likewise, there is no question US healthcare is broken, and very few people will disagree with that. But rather than debating endlessly if we should use Switzerland, Britain, Canada, or Germany as a model, lets California and/or Vermont experiment with single payer and KY, OH, and IN experiment with selling multistate insurance policies and see what works. California is what the worlds 4th largest economy with a population bigger than all but 3 or 4 countries in the EU.

Also let’s not confuse the Republican party with conservatism, there is virtually nothing that Trump’s Republican party has done that is conservative and plenty that Bush 43 did that wasn’t conservative either.

4385

So ethnic homogeneity is a prerequisite to a decent social safety net? This liberal remains skeptical.

4386

That was a pretty long way of saying Conservatism cannot fail, only be failed.

Also - that bit about harmony for centuries? That’s the sort of thing you can only write when you know only the bullet points of history about a country.

The big difference is the Unions. The Scandinavian model (and in general - the European model - though Scandinavia is the region where the Unions succeeded the best) is literally the result of a century+ of workers fighting for their rights to live a decent life. That fight failed in the US. I’ll leave the detailed analysis of why that failed to others (since there are multiple reasons), but generally speaking, without a powerful enough interest group willing to fight for the poor, government becomes by the rich, for the rich.

4387

Well show me an example of a country with highly diverse country with a strong social safety net?

4388

Correlation is not causation. There is also a correlation between how far north a country is and how strong its social safety net. I would not bet on either being the cause of the other though.

4389

On come on. Fear mongering the ACA and an incompetent DNC in a census year did that (along with millions from the Koch brothers et al.) That had nothing to do with nationalizing everything (and besides which, suggesting that the Republican party gives one whit about states rights is on par with Republicans are the party of family values or fiscal conservatism.)

No other country has tried the American experiment (i.e. unrestricted immigration for much of its history.) By the second or third generation regardless of point of origin everyone who comes here becomes an American. Unless you’re suggesting that African Americans make a robust social safety net impossible? Also, economies of scale, the fuck does that work? Seriously Strollen why do you keep pedaling this argument?

I’ve travelled cross country and aside from physical geography and in some places food, there’s no discernible difference between places. Every town and city has a mall, a Wal-Mart, a Home Depot, a Lowes, the same fast food joints, the same suburban sprawl. There’s nothing to distinguish St. George UT from Sarasota FL except the vegetation.

4390

I’m saying that much of the argument against providing a social net is an opposition to providing handouts to “others”, be they Black, Hispanic, or immigrants in the US, or Shia/Sunni in the Arab world, or Muslim/Hindu/ Buddhist in South East Asia. Not to mention the recent push back by many European to include Muslim immigrants in social services. It is easier to get buy in to providing for the poor via higher taxes, when they look like you and share your values.

You really think there is big economics of scale of delivery health care? It is not like we can set up a big healthcare factory in low wage Arkansas, and deliver X-rays, and nursing care to folks in NY or CA. There are also dis economies to scale, which occur when you coordination overhead exceeds any economies of scale. That pretty much describes most Federal programs in the US that are delivered across the country, like Head Start or SNAP
.
Europe has 23 or so healthcare system, why hasn’t there been a push to come up with a single EU healthcare system? Why would America be worse with 50 different ones? But that’s not even what I’m proposing. I’m saying the conservative principal call for government to be as local as possible. So we have a common
defense, and single space program, and but we let local cities run their own school system, fire department, and police department. Or do you think we should just have FBI and Federal bureau of firefighting?

But even if there is case to be made for a once size fits all universal health care, or even much simpler task of say legalize pot across the country. Only a fool or incredibly arrogant person (aka Trump) would say they know how to do either today. We have an opportunity to use states as lab, to see what works and what doesn’t. Several years ago 60 Minutes did extensive story on Colorado’s pot legalization. Their governor advice to other states, was not to rush in to legalize pot, but rather wait and learn from CO.

I think there are lot of difference between the state. If nothing else Utah has the Mormon church and Florida has lots of senior citizen, and African American and Utah doesn’t. Utah is very red and Florida is purple.
But there are more similarities between states than there are differences, which is why it makes far more sense to look to the states to provide solutions to national problems than point to some state size country in Europe and saying lets copy them.

Plus why the hell are you talking about Republican party? Both and I and Andrew Sullivan explicitly said leave them out of this discussion.

4391

Indeed, some people should continue to be discriminated against when it comes to marriage, or disproportionately jailed, or forced to suffer defunded public schools, or die becuase they can’t get health care, simply because they live in the wrong state, so that we can continue to feel good about our ancient and revered traditions. Sounds reasonable, right?

4392

I know you didn’t like it when I asked the last time, but: Where, then, are the True Conservatives? When were they? If they don’t exist, what do their allegedly good ideas matter?

4393

There’s this beautiful conservative fantasy of the wonder years of the 80s in which Reagan was making the world a better place except for all the illegal invasions, the economy tanking, and the deficit spiraling out of control. But during those years people like Kemp (and Gingrich, ha!) were the True Conservatives.

4394

FIFY, surely a person who’s spent as much time overseas would agree?

4395

In fact I do agree, but I’m not the one arguing that for the sake of tradition and our sacred feelings those other people should starve. Andrew Sullivan is a moral monster, a fact he demonstrates with distressing regularity while continuing to be paid for it.

4396

While you’re right about being the world’s 4th largest economy (though 10th if you take purchasing power parity into consideration), it has a population bigger than all but 5 EU countries (Germany, UK, France, Italy and Spain) - and is not much larger than Poland (39.5 million vs 38 million). However, California is also larger in area than all but 3 countries in the EU (France, Spain and Sweden).

4397

First of all I think there is a tacit understanding in my country (Denmark) among most politicians that a strong social safety net is a long term “insurance”/investment based on the assumption that the majority of citizens will keep residence in the country long enough to both contribute through the relatively high rate of income tax and have the opportunity to draw benefit of unemployment benefits, education for their children, health care costs or pension as examples.
So the prerequisite for a strong social safety net is not necessarily ethnic homogeneity but rather long term residence of workers of some skill/education level (number of low skill jobs have halved in the past 20 years) who know the danish/english language or who can learn it within a narrow timeframe.
It is not surprising to me that voters of my country might then reach the conclusion that unlimited low skill immigration is unsustainable and this viewpoint has been adopted across several political parties (mostly from the center-left to the right).

Returning to your question then I guess that Singapore is an example of a diverse country (74.3% chinese, 13.3% malays, 9.1% indians) with at least some kind of social safety net (provided through a mandatory pension fund: Central Provident Fund). One could argue how “strong” it is but it seems successful.

Depending on your position on the EU (EU skepticism is more widespread among voters than politicians) one could argue that the EU is trying to push this at least gradually with their common Health Insurance Card
http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=559

The EU also has rules pushing for social security systems for workers to extend across borders (google it because I have reached my link limit :) ).

As an EU national you are entitled to the same benefits as national workers from the day you start working there (employed or self-employed).

This is also seen as a threat (mostly by conservatives) to the sustainability of our social security net although it is still mostly a theoretical threat considering the relatively low number of EU citizens that choose to work in Denmark compared to let’s say the UK https://fullfact.org/immigration/eu-migration-and-uk/

4398

I hear Sweden is encouraging greater immigration into it’s country.

4399

Just to be clear I base my political considerations on my opinion that run-amok financial services along with tax-skipping multinationals are a far bigger threat to any “social welfare state” than immigration might ever be.

4400

So you have a sane view of the world, is what you’re saying.

4401

Welcome. And agreed, get it, a-greed. :)

4402

I think you have some misconceptions about lack of diversity in other countries. For example, the UK is about 82% white. Canada is about 79% white. They are not substantially different from the US (77%) yet both have stronger safety nets.