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Originally Posted by Lune
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Meanwhile, in the United States, our country is being systematically looted by the elite and their politician minions. We can't reform our healthcare system, we can't reform our election system, we can't rebuild our infrastructure, revolutionize our energy production, control the scam that is our higher education, or reign in the military industrial complex. Our peers are doing these things, or never had these problems in the first place, because at a very fundamental level, their politicians aren't owned solely by the elite, and as a result, their political systems work (they also don't have the fiscal conservative political legacy of temporarily-embarrassed millionaires like we do but that's another discussion).
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So first off, I don't think there is much evidence that this is true. If you check
https://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results the USA comes in at 74. That's behind some of the European countries (Denmark: 92, Iceland: 79, Germany: 79) but ahead of many others (Austria: 72, France: 69, Spain: 60). The reality is that people of all shapes, colors, religions, and nationalities like money and power . . . and politicians more than most.
But even if we grant your assumption, we live in the United States. How is the expansion of government likely to fix our elite/politician problems?
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Originally Posted by Lune
Japan
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I nearly stopped reading when you quoted Japan as a Social/Democratic success story. Japan is embroiled in a 25 year depression exacerbated by failed Keynesian policies and corporatism that are currently screwing us here in the USA, and just suffered the worst nuclear disaster since . . . that other socialist country, Russia. I'm sure the citizens of Fukushima are thrilled by your assertion that their strong government protects them from capitalist waste.
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Originally Posted by Lune
TL;DR Stop saying Democratic-Socialism doesn't work. You don't get to just ignore the many places where it works wonderfully, while the USA continues to spiral into neo-Feudalism.
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I am not going to restrict my list of Democractic Socialist countries to those populated by Northern Europeans. That would be racist.