Lots of Cuba, Venezuela, USSR comparisons being tossed his way. But what does he actually say?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Bernie_Sanders

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2015/11/20/9767096/bernie-sanders-socialism-jacobin

The money quote from Sanders on this issue is this: “I don’t think government should own the means of production.”

The actual, honest-to-God socialists in the U.S. (and there really aren’t many of them, honestly) don’t claim Sanders as one of their own.

Some of them do support him anyway, but they don’t think the “revolution” Bernie talks about goes nearly far enough.

Noam Chomsky (whom you may not like, but who is an expert on what socialism is and isn’t) calls Sanders an “honest New Dealer” but not a true socialist.

Despite Sanders’ “revolution” language, what he proposes is in fact just aggressive reform that would make us more like Denmark, not the USSR.

And please, KF, explain to me how you and comrade Bernie would scale up the Nordic model, so that it would have any chance of being successful in the US? If you have a plan, I'd love to hear it. But saying the Nordic model will work here, is like saying some plan they've implemented in a US city o about 6.5 million will work for the whole country. If running a small country efficiently is the paradigm for running larger countries, it would have been done by now. This is nothing new they're doing over there.

Will employers like paying 60% of their employees' wages to the govt?

Will healthcare workers (yes, doctor, nurses, etc.) like being told there is now a cap on how much they earn? (you have to nationalize the workers if you nationalize healthcare)

And most importantly, how will you get the US govt to stop spending money like drunken sailors on shore leave, and start spending it responsibly, as they do in Norway?

(and btw, that trillion dollar fund they don't touch, that they have from selling their oil, is pretty cool, considering they're going to ban gasoline automobiles by 2025...)

It won’t happen overnight, that’s for sure. And it can’t possibly happen with a GOP Senate frankly, or even a Democratic Senate unless the filibuster is done away with. Which may in fact happen one day because as it stands, hyperpartisanship in our era means the filibuster kills darn near everything.

The dirty little secret of presidential campaigns is most of the candidates’ proposals don’t stand a prayer of being enacted. Trump certainly didn’t get his wall built though it was one of his biggest platforms.

That said: assuming Sanders can somehow enact some or most of his policies, if those policies can work in a country of 5 million I think they can work in a country of 300+ million. Why is “scaling up” a barrier? We have all the expertise those smaller countries have and then some.

But if you don’t think Denmark’s model can ever work here, then just try Canada’s. That country has 30 million, so it’s just 1/11 our size. They’re more liberal than us in many ways but their nation still works well.

Norway’s a bit different, we don’t have that much oil relative to our population but Sweden and Denmark don’t.

Bernie tripled down on his praise of Cuba's indoctrination system and called breadlines a good thing.

We had bread lines in this country during the Great Depression

(Which was caused by the rampant speculation and lack of regulation in the roaring 20’s by the way)

Could Sanders have been saying bread lines are better than starving?

Or: does Sanders want to abolish supermarkets and force us all into bread lines on Day 1 of his Presidency!

I dunno man, I’ve never seen this bread line quote of his repeated with any context so this is all speculation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJBjjP8WSbc The need of a breadline is because for shortages, and that us not a good thing. Saying it could be worse is not a defense for needing breadlines.

Also Bernie posted a "disparity" class warfare editorial, with this bit, "These days, the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the land of Horatio Alger. Who's the banana republic now?" https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/must-read/close-the-gaps-disparities-that-threaten-america

It seems that staving to death because of basic shortages is better in than some people being allowed to to get too rich.

Abolish the state and you just might get this

(I also wonder; maybe there are other factors at work here? Maybe introducing third world countries into this discussion is a dumb comparison!)

We the people didn't abolish the state, we established it.

With serious limitations based on experience.

Which some have forgotten.

Moslems*

I was gonna go with prolonged famine but whatevs

In Venezuela the economy was overreliant on oil and collapsed when prices tanked

Personal Income Tax Rate in Denmark averaged 60.45 percent from 1995 until 2018, reaching an all time high of 65.90 percent in 1997 and a record low of 55.40 percent in 2010.

Yup, the Scandinavian model is collapsing.

Higher taxes

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-denmark-election-welfare-insight/danes-make-welfare-a-hot-election-issue-as-cracks-show-in-nordic-model-idUSKCN1SZ0IC

Fraud, to protect wealth

https://www.ft.com/content/d467cce6-d834-11e8-a854-33d6f82e62f8

Returning to free-market economy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/nordic-countries-scale-back-welfare-states/

They’re not utopias of course. But beyond these headlines, they are holding up just fine. No Venezuelas in the Baltic yet.

And even if they are turning rightward to an extent, they are still still to the left of what we have here.

Now let’s do America: What sorts of headlines could we choose from to prove our “model” is collapsing?

Oh boy, that would be fun. But mostly just sad.

You could also cite unemployment figures, those are doing well.

If there were literally no bright spots at this point in this historically-long economic recovery, then that would be surprising. Overall, growth over the past decade has been consistent, but historically weak.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/6f8c3308-9d04-11e9-9c06-a4640c9feebb

Why is the growth we’re seeing in this recovery overall weaker than in the past?

I’d suggest it’s because in many other ways our country is going backwards: skyrocketing healthcare costs, infrastructure decay, drug overdoses; suicides; uptick in crime; rising hyperpartisanship and politically-motivated violence; a ballooning national debt (even under a GOP President); a brutal combination of student debt, lack of good job prospects, and housing unaffordability that are slamming the young; a precarious future for financing of our public pensions; unwillingness to seriously address climate change or other environmental issues.

Some already well-off folks are getting very rich indeed, while large chunks of society are being left out in the cold.

The overall improving economic conditions are masking a lot of rot in our society, owing to our lack of political will to address them, that will become even more apparent when the economy inevitably catches a cold again.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

Why is it weaker? Hmmm......what could hinder the president's ability to implement his policies....

You flatter yourself thinking Trump has much of an agenda at all

In two years of unified GOP control of the federal government, you guys got the tax cuts done and that’s about it

Despite not liking Trump, the incoming Democratic House was ready to play ball on issues like infrastructure and the environment since Day One

Instead Trump picked a dumb fight over the border wall and shut down the government for a solid month, then was forced to back down when Pelosi wouldn’t cave

The foul play in Ukraine was entirely worth investigating, and the GOP Senate caved to Administration stonewalling and whiffed completely.

Maybe Trump should stop being a narcissistic TV-watching, Twitter-addicted, golf-playing, conspiratorial lawbreaking f**khead and lead the damn country

Still way too high for a country with our wealth and rule-of-law levels

Your chart conveniently stops before listing Uruguay, Paraguay, Mexico, Costa Rica, Southj Africa, Philippines, Panama, Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, El Salvador, Guatemala, Jamaica, Eswatini, and Honduras.

Starting at South Africa - their per-capita gun murder rate is double the USA, Panama is triple, Colombia is almost 5 times our rate, Venezuela is more than 6 times, Guatemala 7x, Eswatini over 8x, Honduras - wow, 16x the gun murder rate as the USA.

Your chart is just another attempt to demonize US gun owners by ignoring the fact that we're closer to the bottom of the list than the top. Whoever made that chart thought you would be too lazy (or stupid) to figure out they were lying to you, and they were right.

Here's what the real chart looks like, with no data omitted:

It’s not really convincing to compare ourselves to countries doing worse than us in human development, with much higher poverty rates.

Why should we pat ourselves on the back for doing better than a basket case like El Salvador?

With our wealth and rule-of-law, we should be in line with other rich-world countries. But instead, we’re a tremendous outlier.

Whatever happened to the mentality of wanting to lead the world?

If liberal (gun control) cities like Chicago are removed from the count - we drop way down the list.

Local gun control efforts are bound to fail in a country awash in 393+ million privately owned guns

Other countries have succeeded but not with a patchwork of totally inconsistent local laws like here

Great numbers if you’re actually in it

Forgot the link: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/business/economy/stocks-economy.amp.html

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/guid/F13781CA-AC98-11E9-9DE8-AFC97186E038

The student debt system is broken, even Trump’s own people know it

I won’t really challenge this one, since it’s expected. But I will say that if this wasn’t the case at this stage of an economic recovery, then that would be truly abysmal

Yikes on a bike

I know who the Khmer Rouge is dude!

Is this what Dems want to do in your book?

Hey, that garden of bones resembles your streams and butthurt memes and deleted comments, don't it?

I dunno man I don’t see it

Eh these G-man juxtapositions never quite did it for me

You’re going to have to really jettison your conscience like Syd to get a rise out of me