United States invaded by France - no one notices

[TheBadass]

Wait. France? Socialist? I must have missed something, because the last thing that I heard, Nicolas Sarkozy was pushing forward a very capitalist agenda with the Lisbon Treaty. Do you Yanks have some sort of alternate definition for the word, "socialist", then?

Yes. Yes they do.

 

[Galletea]

I'd assumed the author had just read a social history book and left it there. sarkozy is indeed pushing for a more capitalist france, with education on his list of things to start privatising.
so i'm guessing the article conveniently ignored that but then the media likes to omit the truth.

 

[Hey Joe]

Sarkozy is pushing for a more capitalist France, but it doesn't mean it'll happen. He'll get some concessions, sure, but not a lot because it'll be tough work getting the bill to pass through both houses.

If Bush pushed for Satanism to become the state religion, whaddya think will happen?

Remember, 'pushing' is not the same as 'doing'.

Besides, the US system is ULTRA CAPITALIST, so other systems of economic management look quite socialist in comparison.

 

[Saskwach]

Sarkozy is pushing for a more capitalist France, but it doesn't mean it'll happen. He'll get some concessions, sure, but not a lot because it'll be tough work getting the bill to pass through both houses.

If Bush pushed for Satanism to become the state religion, whaddya think will happen?

Remember, 'pushing' is not the same as 'doing'.

Besides, the US system is ULTRA CAPITALIST, so other systems of economic management look quite socialist in comparison.

That's a key point: a single leader does not make a government, and neither does a leader make popular opinion on governance. Sarkozy won't make a thoroughly capitalist France.

 

[Pipotchi]

Americans have two weeks holiday?
Two weeks?!
In the UK it's nearly at least a month unpaid leave.

I learnt a lot of new things in that article, cheers.

You need to work in the public sector and ideally in a unionised role

I get 52 days paid vacation a year

 

[Hey Joe]

Besides, the US system is ULTRA CAPITALIST, so other systems of economic management look quite socialist in comparison.

No, America's got a fair amount of social welfare. On the national level most of it is left over from Roosevelt's response to the Great Depression, although there is some new stuff like SCHIP.

There's also a lot done at the state level, like public subsidies for state universities.

EDIT: in fact, sometimes the U.S. government gets into trouble with the WTO for spending *too much* money on domestic industries: http://www.oxfamamerica.org/newsandpublications/press_releases/archive-2005/wto_cotton_ruling

We're all aware of the huge subsidies for the agriculture sector, but a lot of your system is privatised like the health care industry (due to lobbying from pharmaceutical companies) or the education system where to get a decent education you have to go to a private school.

Then again, I'm commenting from outside the US, but it does seem that a lot of things that a socialised in other countries are privatised in the US. Maybe ULTRA CAPITALIST is taking things a bit far, but it's still the homeland of capitalism.

 

[OverlordSteve]

Well, on the bright side, my French will finally come in handy.

 

[Amnestic]

I can't wait until the Americans get socialised medicine. Oh how I will laugh. Take *that* health insurance companies, you money gouging wankers.

 

[TomNook]

I don't know why everyone has so many issues with capitalism doing its job.

 

[Zykon TheLich]

Burning sheep carcasses will be blocking all US highways within the month.

EDIT: Goddammit, the French don't always run away, the last foreign power to conquer the area that is modern France (before Hitler) was lead by Julius Fucking Ceaser (His second name really was 'Fucking', totally true fact). *Tries not to go off into the French did OK considering how badly their army was run at the time compared to the germans rant...*

 

[sneakypenguin]

I can't wait until the Americans get socialised medicine. Oh how I will laugh. Take *that* health insurance companies, you money gouging wankers.

Umm wow ignorance/selfishness abounds in that post, but I shall refrain from debate as arguing politics online is like banging your head on a wall.

 

[Clairaudient]

As a Canadian, watching the american economy situation reminds a lot of this. [http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=I0mxVLY8IWQ]

 

[Saskwach]

Of course there's nothing wrong with averting a major economic crisis, but when you do you should admit you're not a laissez-faire type just to the right of Milton Friedman.

Stuff I struggled to keep up with.

This is what I get for name-dropping someone whose thoughts I only barely knew. I'd heard that MF wasn't against certain protections and government intervention/regulation - and also felt as F.A. Hayek's did on a lot of issues - but in my zeal to think of a name I could associate with laissez-faire economics MF came out the worse.

 

[Saskwach]

Of course there's nothing wrong with averting a major economic crisis, but when you do you should admit you're not a laissez-faire type just to the right of Milton Friedman.

A curious thing is that Milton Friedman is actually far to the left of what qualifies as 'right wing' in America today. Milton Friedman was actually the push behind a significant piece of social welfare called the Earned Income Tax Credit [http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/11/milton_friedman_1.html] (although he was opposed to it in its final form because it merely added to other social welfare programs and did not replace them: Milton Freedman wasn't an enemy of social welfare, but of big government)

While reading that link (very interesting) I remembered a quote of a study (I know, it's terrible - all I know is Thomas Sowell was the quoter) that concluded that the total money spent in America to raise the poor out of their poverty would have achieved its goal simply by gathering all that money and giving it to them. I found myself thinking "That's a nice stat, but how would you actually pass a Give Money Directly To The Poor Bill and how would it work?"
It looks like MF gave some thought to that question decades earlier.