Quote:
Originally Posted by BigCityDreamer
The United States is a representative democracy and a mixed economy capitalist country.
Do you think this is the best system in the world? If not, which other country has a better system than the United States?
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Switzerland is my first choice. It is a direct democracy with very high voter turn-out. It's people are wealthier than those in the US, and it has outstanding medical care for all its citizens.
I also like Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Austria for much the same reasons. Canada is high on my list also.
Meanwhile in the US, we cannot seem to shake our legacy of racism, and we make it hard for minorities to vote with our voter suppression laws and gerrymandering. We do our best to ensure that members of minorities stay in their place by underfunding schools in minority neighborhoods and making sure they can't escape those neighborhoods by tactics like red-lining.
Our healthcare system is a joke, and citizens of our next door neighbor, Canada have a longer life span than we do. The republican party has taken delight in dismantling whatever small progress we have made toward universal healthcare and won't rest until only the upper middle class and the wealthy have access to competent doctors and state of the art treatments.
We do not believe in the social contract or the social safety net. We are bitter over every single penny we may have to pay to provide meals on wheels to low income seniors and god forbid that a disabled American have access to affordable housing where they could spend their years with a modicum of dignity in an efficiency or a small one bedroom apartment.
We begrudge children from low income families a hot lunch or cold breakfast at their schools. We scream with outrage if a single Mom getting back on her feet is issued so much as a dollar thru SNAP to help feed her small children.
The streets of our cities are filled with the homeless - often people who suffer from schizophrenia or other serious mental illness or just had the misfortune to get laid off and can't pay the rent in cities like Denver or San Francisco because the cost of real estate is now simply obscene, and the NIMBY crowd refuse to allow affordable housing to be built anywhere within a 100 mile radius of their neighborhoods.
As a people we are highly suspicious of education and would rather see our young people drop out of high school than attend college - which the financial industry is making more and more unaffordable anyhow. We hate science with a passion not seen since the time of the middle ages. We love the idea that every last scientist on earth is part of some bizarre vast conspiracy theory even as we hang on to every word that falls from the lips of some shill for BP or Exxon Mobile.
And last but not least, we have elected an ignorant thug for president* who encourages us in our worst behavior and views the highest office in the land as a means of enriching his family coffers and a way to ensure that his "brand" circles the globe.
My poor, poor country! We are going into a death spiral and don't even notice it.
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