How do all the other countries have so much more socialism and environmentalism in their governments without interference from corporations? Is it because these nations are legally more socialized so incentive for profit isn't there? Is it because their politicians resist lobby? Is lobbying even a real concept in other countries? Do they have stops in place to prevent corporate corruption? No campaign contributions obviously.

Healthcare, drugs, energy, climate all seem to be less debated in other countries but theres a firestorm here.

4/10/2012 12:13:04 PM

It seems almost all of your preconceptions are mistaken.

Corporations tend to be socialism's greatest advocates. Just check how strongly the insurance and healthcare industry lobbied in favor of obamacare.

Also, much of Europe is less socialist than America, given their proclivity for having government funded private corporations performing tasks we here in America reserve for state owned enterprises. American hospitals are often owned by the county or city, while in Europe they are usually privately owned for profit entities (Britain being the big exception).

Socialism in Europe is the state transferring money from tax-payers to subsidize private for-profit corporations providing services to the public, such as operating a railroad, hospitals, delivering the mail, maintaining bridges, and often roads. This is not really socialism, it really needs another word. State Single-Payer Capitalism would work, I guess. Don't fool yourself into thinking these publicly funded corporations do not lobby their government for greater subsidies and protection from competition.

As for the debate question, the U.S. is a huge country with a huge population. We are able to sustain five 24-hour news networks, while most European countries have one or two, some have none other than CNN. This allows Americans to publicly debate our issues in detail, while Europeans are forced to debate their issues in smaller more private venues you are less likely to read about.

Also, you are wrong. Only America limits political campaign contributions to such an extent. Many countries have no restrictions and those that do are efforts to exclude non-citizens.
http://www.loc.gov/law/help/campaign-finance/comparative-summary.php#private

There is also the distraction question. European countries tend to be consumed by a never-ending debate over how much they should oppress immigrant minorities, changes needed to their federal structure, and inter-country conflicts within the EU, leaving little time to debate the issues you list. If Texas decided to leave the Union then we too would spend far less time debating healthcare, drugs, energy, etc.

4/10/2012 1:37:01 PM

Quote :

"American hospitals are often owned by the county or city, while in Europe they are usually privately owned for profit entities (Britain being the big exception)."

Do you actually have anything to back this up? Seems to me we have many more hospital corporations/private facilities than state owned ones, with the exception of mental facilities or prisons or the VA.

The only public hospital within 5 hours of me is the VA.

Props for being so confident in yourself, it really does help people buy your bullshit. Do you work in advertising?

4/12/2012 9:43:15 AM

What do you think "often" means? I have no idea what the ratio is, only that publicly run hospitals are common enough for me to have heard of them.

wikipedia has this to say: "In the United States, two thirds of all urban hospitals are non-profit. The remaining third is split between for-profit and public."

4/12/2012 6:25:20 PM

Well, that would suggest to me that american hospitals are not "often" owned by the city, state or county if less than 1/3 of them are public.

4/12/2012 6:42:43 PM

And as we've already learned, non-proft =/= not-for-profit.

4/13/2012 1:26:02 PM

I stopped reading at

Quote :

"Also, much of Europe is less socialist than America,"

4/13/2012 4:52:31 PM