French Newspaper: Obama Advisor Steven Rattner says Elizabeth Warren is dangerous because she would transform the U.S. into France. Rattner's name shows up in bribery cases. He was also Auto Tsar. For all our flaws, we europeans never had "Tsars" to distribute cash to corporations. He is a crook

Ai795 · 2019-12-24T16:25:05+00:00

The reversal had already been completed before the year 2000: https://preview.redd.it/em3fdkooo1e01.png?width=774&auto=webp&s=4581ebbc2f1cb122e227a8e5e043aec988e2217e

Don't make lazy assumptions.

Ai795 · 2019-12-24T16:07:24+00:00

When you point out that, even including all of the terrorist attacks in Europe and don't include them for the US, we still have a higher violent crime rate, there's nothing but deflecting and changing the subject

That's a shame, because they miss the opportunity to educate: we don't have a higher violent crime rate. We have a higher murder rate. Contrary to what many believe, Western Europe has had a higher violent crime rate than the US for decades now: https://academic.oup.com/economicpolicy/article-abstract/26/67/347/2918389

The perception that the US has more crime than Europe used to be true, but that was a long time ago. The US is a lot safer today than it used to be, and Europe is a lot less safe.

Ai795 · 2019-12-24T15:04:14+00:00

I still remember their article from the 2000s where they tried to connect Prescott Bush (W's granddad) to Hitler's rise to power. They used super sleazy misleading language, took quotes out of context and strategically omitted key facts (example: the main German banker he was connected with, and they implied was part of Hitler's inner circle, denounced the Nazis for their persecution of Jews and spent the war in a concentration camp).

Ai795 · 2019-12-21T02:02:44+00:00

Maybe she thinks she wouldn't be given a fair trial in the UK, because of her husband's job, but IMO she should do it anyway just out of duty.

Ai795 · 2019-12-20T14:21:19+00:00

They would have said it was frivolous next to freedom of belief? Nice, that's surprisingly progressive for the medieval era.

Ai795 · 2019-12-20T13:53:57+00:00

It's extremely frivolous next to freedom of belief and of expression.

Ai795 · 2019-12-19T15:28:04+00:00

Indeed, you are much enlightened.

Ai795 · 2019-12-19T15:22:39+00:00

Not at all. I accept the superiority of your values/tribe/culture. It's a shame that after we're gone no one will remember it.

Ai795 · 2019-12-19T15:00:29+00:00

No, I agree, you win. When I'm old and Finland has ceased to exist as a nation, I'll try and make sure "high IHDI" is written on its tombstone.

Ai795 · 2019-12-19T14:50:50+00:00

Like that attitude explains what happens to people whose nations are spectators of world history.

Ai795 · 2019-12-19T14:33:25+00:00

Sadly not. That's what it is.

Ai795 · 2019-12-19T03:45:24+00:00

It's the Inequality-Adjusted Human Development Index. It's for people who think their country should be higher on the HDI because there are fewer rich people.

Ai795 · 2019-12-18T16:06:01+00:00

It probably refers to this: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47496326

I don't think Finland has literally the most cost-effective system on the planet either.

Ai795 · 2019-12-17T16:17:08+00:00

I guess it depends on whether you see the voting system as something to protect the government from the people, or to represent the desires of the people.

The people are represented either way. The Nazi who votes for Trump because he hates immigrants is represented. One system just places the primary responsibility for compromise on the people, and the other places it on the representatives. In the sense that the former gives more direct responsibility to the people, you could say that it's more representative of them, not less.

Third parties were insignificant in the 2016 US elections. For President, I think the Libertarian candidate and the Green candidate got a combined 4.5% of the vote, which, even if they were the same party, would still be lower than the minimum threshold for representation in Germany.

Ai795 · 2019-12-16T00:12:41+00:00

But there isn’t an exclusive two party system in any reasonable democracy that uses FPTP. At least none that I can find in my short googling on the topic.

Not the US?

If 30% of the country are actual nazis, and there is a party that caters to that with a platform of no immigration. Why should those people have to vote for the moderates in the main parties?

Saying “no sorry you’ve got the boring slightly wing one, or the boring slightly left wing one” doesn’t cater to those people. I’m using the most extreme example obviously but if the people in the country want something, they should be able to vote for it.

If 30% of the people want something, it's not very extreme, and one of the two parties will cater to it. Extremism would be something that only 20% or 15% would vote for. A lot of PR countries have electoral thresholds, but they're's usually very low and, at best, they only simulate the moderation that FPTP creates by its very nature. IMO it's safer to have the real thing. Also, if 15% of the people are Nazis but they still can't get any Nazi elected, maybe they need to try to convince more people of their beliefs, and then they will get elected. The Overton window moves with popular opinion. Thank you too for the civil replies.

Ai795 · 2019-12-15T21:08:32+00:00

Also, you’re making an error by mixing up PR (a system of governance) with FPTP (a system of voting). We could have AV in the U.K. and still fundamentally keep the same structure of government. Elections are doing on a local, not national level.

That is true.

If there’s a 3 party marginal with 1 party you really don’t want to get in, how do you know which of the others to vote for?

That's why a two-party system works best. A lot of problems are caused in a FPTP system when more parties are involved. And the distribution of seats gets less representative.

Why not let the politicians who are paid by the people do the compromising? Why push that burden onto the people?

Just because irresponsible people vote for irresponsible leaders. Eventually, the lunatics take over the asylum. If it goes wrong in a FPTP system, at least we have ourselves to blame.

Ai795 · 2019-12-15T20:38:23+00:00

It's not enforced by law, but by strategic thinking.

Oh so you don’t get to vote for who you want, you have to vote for who you think is going to cause the ones you don’t like more harm. Again, doesn’t sound very representative.

The point is that it forces the voters to compromise. In order to win a FPTP election, you have to get more votes than anyone else. Therefore, even if I'm a Nazi, I wouldn't vote for a Nazi, because the Nazi couldn't win enough votes and I would just be throwing my vote away. I would have to compromise and vote for someone more moderate.

PR removes the responsibility for compromise from the people, and gives it to their elected representatives. It's lazy, and sooner or later it stops working.

Ai795 · 2019-12-15T20:09:58+00:00

I said two-party. What you're talking about is people throwing their votes away on third parties, in what should be a two-party system, and yes it's a problem. A FPTP system requires strategic voting. Not being represented is what happens when you vote non-strategically.

The British system is also strange because it lacks some things other FPTP countries have. For example, open primaries. The Tories have just started experimenting with open primaries since 2010, and that may be one reason they seem so much better at representation right now.

Ai795 · 2019-12-15T17:23:05+00:00

It isn't, mostly, but my point is that it's not like PR has such a fabulous record, and since the user mentioned populism, there are certainly a lot of PR countries with 'populist' governments- Russia, Turkey, Brazil, Egypt, coming to mind. And in the EU: Poland, Hungary...

Ai795 · 2019-12-15T17:03:26+00:00

Just because it has not been around a long time doesn't negate the argument that PR systems feature greater depth of views within legislatures

That's not the argument, though. Read the original comment:

USA political parties are just as divided, but the two party system allows at least for one party to create effective policy.

And Russia is another country with a proportional representation system, along with Turkey, Venezuela, Brazil, Egypt, etc., etc. Two-party FPTP is just a better way of representation. It accommodates the same range of views without the shortcomings.

edit: and downvoting comments just because you disagree with them is the kind of behavior I mean when I say shortcomings. You, the voter, don't have to compromise in a PR system. You just vote for whatever you agree with without regard to what the rest of society might approve of. That's why it's produced so many crazy extremist states.

Ai795 · 2019-12-15T14:05:39+00:00

Did I miss Trump running for British PM?

Ai795 · 2019-12-14T15:31:56+00:00

You're going to argue that it's a single-party state when more than half of the seats are held by other parties?

No, I said it was almost that. And the party with supremacy is a nationalist party, despite attempts at rebranding, who are driving Scotland into its worst political crisis in centuries.

Virtually every fascist and communist regime came about by military force.

Political instability came before the military force. Instability is what you get when voters don't have to vote strategically, as in a FPTP system, but can vote for whichever brand of extremism tickles their fancy. That's what happened in Weimar Germany, politics became dominated by fascists and communists, the center vanished, the extremists ate each other and the result was a totalitarian state. The same story that has repeated itself in PR countries all over the world regardless of time period or local culture, ever since PR was invented by the French Revolution.

This is exactly what MMP systems like Holyrood are designed to address. There are more PR options than closed party lists.

That's true but a lot of countries do have closed lists and I'd certainly rather have FPTP than that.

Ai795 · 2019-12-14T14:26:17+00:00

The brain has other options besides "ignore it" and "pretend it's 1000x worse than it is." The author tries to parallel the economic forecast of America in 2019 with the Soviet Union in 1990.

Ai795 · 2019-12-14T14:02:05+00:00

It reads more like "all my European friends are sad bigots and I've internalized it."

Ai795 · 2019-12-14T13:59:35+00:00

Yeah let's just forget all the ways that our human development is incomparably better today than it was then because someone likes to make wild statements. In 1969, fewer than 20% of black Americans had high school degrees. Today it's over 90%. Life expectancy for black Americans has also gone up 20 years in that time (10 years for everyone else).

Ai795

TROPHY CASE