Comments by "Archangel17" (@MDP1702) on "The Rational National"
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Again, you are completely wrong on what caused labour to lose the elections.
- In 2017 they didn't win or lose due to brexit, every party was about honoring the vote, so it just wasn't a large issue. Labour won in 2017 because the conservatives did really badly in the campaign and Corbyn wasn't as disliked.
- Leave parties got a lower share of the vote in these elections compared to remain parties, so clearly supporting a second referending wasn't a bad option. It was just that the remain vote was more split and that labour had both strong leave and strong remain constituencies. Not taking a stance would have alienated both kinds of constituencies, choosing to support brexit would have lost them most constituencies in the larger cities and choosing to support a referendum would loose them the red wall (like now). There was no good choice here, they'd have lost constituencies either way. the main problem is that they took their stance too damn late and didn't gain remain constituencies due to a split remain vote and their tardiness to take a stance.
- No matter what you say, Corbyn's popularity was one of the most important reasons labour lost. Corbyns (in)actions/leadership during the brexit debate and smears made him woefully unpopular. In 2017 his popularity was neutral (0%) in 2019 it was -40%!. No party going into an election with such an unpopular leader can hope to do good. Remember, many people don't just vote based on policies, but also on who will lead the nation, how many people didn't support labour just because they thought Corbyn would be a bad PM (and personally I'd agree with them, Corbyn showed bad leadership during brexit as the opposition, normally an easier task).
So I hope you'll read this and actually look better into this and hopefully change your mind. You usually are quite right about things, but being so wrong on this I just can't stop wonder if there might be more things you are wrong about that I am missing. Labour lost due to 1) Corbyn, 2) a not truly popular/easy to understand program and 3) dragging their feet on brexit, period.
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Usually you are right on the mark, however this time you sometimes weren't.
Supporting a second referendum didn't cause labour to lose, not fast enough supporting it did. For too long the labour stance was ambiguous "do they or don't they support another referendum" and for a long time they didn't. Their official standpoint was (due to Corbyn) to renegotiate a better deal (eventhough the EU rejected any renegotiation) and then get the UK out with it. Furthermore labour didn't work enough together with the other remain parties. A remain alliance that always only put the strongest remain candidate for election would have trounced the conservatives.
As for the brexit party, they didn't do anything to favour the conservatives, the opposite is true. In some consituencies Labour held on BECAUSE the brexit party split the brexit vote. If the brexit party didn't run, most of their voters were most likely to move to the conservatives. This could have been an even bigger landslide for the conservatives without the brexit party.
Also the comparison with the 2017 election was wrong.
- First of back then the conservatives ran a bad campaign that made them weaker than they were now.
- Secondly, the labour manifesto now was considerably more left wing. Even as a leftist European it would have been too left for me. Sure the labour party doesn't need to go to the center, but they should also not slide of to much towards the extreme left. And the lib dems only lost due to the system, in number of votes they did gain 4%, half of what labour lost in number of votes. So no, the lib dems didn't lose, the remain side did due to a split vote and the bad system
- Thirdly, yes brexit played no major role in the 2017 election, but that was only because it was right after the referendum. If labour can't change their strategy based on what happened in the last few years, their loss was their fault.
Now, as for the media, yes, that was bad, but isn't the same happening in the US with Bernie. The main difference is, they can't really get Bernie on anything and Bernie is liked. Corbyn has never been liked outside of the core of his party and his party was split. Hell Corbyn isn't even for remain, but did "campaign" for it.
Labour won the 2017 election despite Corbyn, not because of him. And now against a more focused opponent, an internally weakened and divided labour, he just couldn't make it.
Pro-brexit parties got 46,5% of the vote, so clearly it was the remain split that caused them to lose, not their remain stance. If labour had been pro leave, they'd have lost many remain votes to the lib dems.
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I am sorry, but you are still wrong on the UK election.
First, comparing it to 2017 and pointing to labours good showing as an argument that it was brexit and not the policies is stupid. During the 2017 campaign the tories ran a really bad campaign and labour overall a solid campaign. Basically labour did good back than for a large part because of weak tories. This time the tories campaign was a good populist campaign that resonated with many voters.
Secondly, the backtracking on brexit isn't exactly the problem, the late decision was. Sure labour would lose some seats in strong labour regions, but also might have taken seats in originally not labour regions. Furthermore if labour didn't support a second referendum they might have lost many seats elsewhere, possibly more. After their clear decision to support a second referendum their polling went up from 26% to 32-32% and just so you know, remain got a majority of the votes, they were just much more split up.
Thirdly, Corbyn's popularity might have been the greatest problem. Whether this was due to the smears or not (I think it is both due to the smears and just his own appearance and leadership), it doesn't matter. The fact is Corbyn was the worst candidate to go into this election as the head of labour. During the 2017 election his popularity was mixed, neither popular nor unpopular, but smears and the way he handled brexit made him hugely unpopular (average net popularity was around -40%! last few months). They should have changed leadership during the summer, just like the conservatives did.
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This exactly might also be one of the reasons why his support is highest among young voters and low among older voters, younger voters tend to research more, watch alternative media, ... While older voters mostly watch MSM if they watch news at all. And all of these MSM networks portray Warren and Biden positively (or at least more than they should) and either don't mention Bernie or otherwise if they mention him, it is to attack him.
Ofcourse people who only watch MSM aren't going to see Bernie as a viable candidate and support him and this is also a reason he doesn't do to great in the polls, people underestimate the impact of the MSM on voters. Even lots of bad coverage is better no coverage (see what happened to Trump) because then people might do more research themselves if it becomes to obvious. The thing is, there isn't enough bad things to cover about Bernie.
And this is indeed why bernie voters in general need to speak about him to their family and keep their family up to date about him and his campaign (especially older family members/MSM viewers).
I wished Bernie's campaign talked more about this media black-out, not on these media channels (they'd just black it out again and find some excuse) but on rallies and to say at every rally to spread the word, to inform family members, maybe even promote some non MSM news, like youtube channels (this one, The hill for people more used to "regular news outlook", secular talk, the humanist report, ...)
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@pietersteenkamp5241
1) Yangs UBI is a libertarian one and favours the middle class much more than the lower classes. Those who get certain benefits now would have to give them up to get UBI, which means they get less 1000 dollars per month net, but will still see prices in the stores go up. And the groups receiving benefits are the lower classes. On the other hand, middle class people who do have a well paying job would always get 1000 a month net (or 2000 for a family). So in the end they'd be the greatest beneficiaries. Higher income earners won't feel the difference, neither the 12000 year, nor the price increases; middle class will get more use from the 12000 a year than the price increases and the lower classes will feel the price increases more, while experiencing less of a benefit from the UBI.
Yang's UBI just isn't progressive, and the way it is tailored isn't even taking on the problem it is meant for: job losses due to automation. UBI isn't enough to live from, so these people who lost there job due to automation and can't find another job easily, will live on the brink of poverty, even with UBI. The better option would have been to (temporarily) increase the UBI for people who lost there jobs or earn less than X a year, while lowering it with increasing income (for example up to 40-50k a year income) or just increase welfare benefits and create better unemployement pay (like universal income for people without a job).
2) The problem with a public option in the US (possibly in contrast to other nations) is that the private insurance companies are really strong and the entire system is corrupt and bloated.
A. IC's (insurance companies) will just offer different plans for sick and healthy people. The plans for sick people will be so bad and expensive that the sick people will move to the public option; while the plans for the healthy people won't cover much, but are cheaper than the public option (and many healthy people might be trapped by this). This will cause all sick people to move to the public option, increasing costs there, while the healthy people will go to the IC's, decreasing income for the public option, while still allowing the IC's to make large profits (although maybe not as much as now).
This will force the government to increase the funding and allow politicians and other actors opposed to government interference to say "see how inefficient it is. If a public option fails, how can m4a ever work" and bring it back to the same private insurance system it was before.
B. Furthermore would a public option not deal with othe problems of the current US system, the costs would remain high, because the government will have less leverage to force drugcompanies to lower prices, costs in hospitals and doctors will still remain high due to the enormous amount of administration due to fragmentation. The difficulty to see what is covered, where you can go, which doctor you can visit, things like ambulance choppers that still will work privately and can charge people whatever they want (no one can start negotiating prices when they need to urgently get to the hospital), ... Basically the public option doesn't allow to increase efficiency, streamline everything and will basically end up being just another cog in the insurance/healthcare machine. So in the end a public option WILL remain more expensive than m4a and might even become more expensive than the current system overall.
The US system now already causes healthcare prices to be twice as high per capita compared to the average of other OECD countries, so this system needs to be changed completely, something that won't happen with a public option.
An option might be to get a m4a plan like Bernie's, but replace the ban for duplicative coverage with a demand that ALL private plans MUST offer AT LEAST the same coverage as m4a and allow everyone to pay the same price (so no discrimination based on people's medical history, current medical conditions, ...). But this would be a cosmetic difference mostly, because IC's wouldn't be able to make a profit with this. The only difference between these plans would be price (probably higher for IC plans than m4a, due to profit incentive) and extra coverage. But then again, this extra coverage can already be offered under Bernie's plan and who would want to pay a higher price? So the endresult would be similar.
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@eragon78 I believe it should be taxed on income with a very progressive taxrate (eventually 80-90% on anything above 1 billion). And I'd include the sale of stocks as income. But I don't think it is a good idea to tax perceived wealth, which stocks essentially are. Stocks can rise quickly only to drop even more the next day, how are you going to tax that? Is the government going to return taxes when the value of the stocks drop? it just isn't a good, nor easy thing to tax that. However when turning this perceived wealth into real wealth (selling stocks) this is something different. So just tax all income (regular, bonus, stock selling, dividends, ...) with a progressive tax rate. As long as people don't sell stocks, the value of stocks don't matter, they can't use it to do anything else than have a say in the company.
And ofcourse close all tax loopholes (though for this I'd essentially burn down the complete tax system and built it back up new, including incentives, etc.)
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@johnbuckner2828 Moving away was maybe putting it strong, more hesitant maybe. Though they are expected to replace several of their reactors, there doesn't seem to be a huge push. It is possible they'll get nuclear more as a baseload (+-50-60% of the grid) and the rest be from renewables. Honestly it isn't entirely clear. What is clear is that they are investing in renewables the last few years and that production from nuclear slightly tapered of a bit at the same time and there isn't an official response on the price of new reactors offered last year (othey asked for the quote). It is possible they think the price is high and are considering other options, a different mix, ... At the very least they aren't gun hoo in regards to nuclear.
I was under the impression that once nuclear plants, especially with newer technology, we're up and running that the maintenance costs were pretty low, & it's just the startup cost that deter investment.
Yes and know. The greatest cost is obviously the initial investment, which makes it a risky investment without government assurances (taxpayer money assurance essentially). However maintenance might be rather cheap in comparison, it is still expensive. And it seems the latest plants being build in Europe currently are going to have a rather high LCOE cost compared to older reactors (possibly more than doubled).
Also with these newer small scale plants that can just be buried in concrete and left to run for 20 years and die don't seem to require maintenance?
That sound rather idealised. Often SMR's are brought up as a cheaper, better solution, however several SMR's I looked into seem to have a comparable price in the end. Their main advantage seems to be flexibility, maybe. Most of the SMR that are hailed as great etc, aren't yet in operation anywhere. So it is difficult to actually see their capabilities.
Honestly I'd wait for gen 4 reactors, they seem much more promising, though they still will have to live up to their expectations/hope too.
There just isn't a clear cut "this is the best" answer to electricity generation, each one had advantages and disadvantages. It is clear it will be renewables and/or nuclear, and personally I expect some kind of mix in the long turn (with nuclear more focused on industrial, especially with electrification there, and renewable more for households/commercial buildings). Though also the public adversity will play a part, for example in Germany I don't see any new nuclear plant in the next 20-25 years, possibly even longer, because there is just no public support for it (the opposite).
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@eddefy22
Saudi Arabia is probably the most fundamentalist islamic nation in the world and supports countless terrorist organisations. The only reason the US didn't go after them is because they were allied to the US and US needs their support in the middle east.
Oh BTW we targeted the Iraqi military and ousted a dictator.
Oh and how did that played out? Decades of instability, hundred thousands dead, the rise of ISIS, .... Yeah that was a great job the US did. Eventually the same happened in Syria, a dictator was ousted, and the country fell into chaos. These dictators might go against our feeling of democratie and might do horrible things, but they provided stability and the suffering they caused was less then the suffering caused by war.
US intelligence knew there weren't WMD's, this was just an excuse. There were several politicians that argued against the Iraq war like Sanders, who realised that there wasn't enough proof and that there wasn't a good enough plan for after the invasion.
Al qaida killed 2900 people, the US a couple 100k, seems a more then fair answer.
See we don’t attack a whole populace on the basis “some people did something in New York”. Which is in that case kill 29 hundred people.
Oh yes, you did. It might not have been the official reason, but that was the reason many american supported the Iraq war and why only so few people were against it. People were much more easily persuaded that there were WMD's exactly because of 9/11.
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You are somewhat missing the mark here.
For one space exploration is incredibly important for humanity. The resources on earth are finite, however in space you have practically infite amount of resources. A lot of problems now could possibly be fixed with future space advancement, going from resources to energy production, to even ensuring the survival of the human species. The truth is that we actually don't spent enough in space.
Now as for the wealth tax, for some time I was in favor of this, however I changed my stance on it a bit. The main problem is that a lot of wealth is due to stocks. Sure they can sell them to pay the tax, but how are you going to calculate the tax? What if right after paying the tax their wealth suddenly halves due to the stocks plummeting? Should part of the tax be payed back? That is the problems, stocks are essentially perceived wealth untill they are sold. The better solution would actually be to tax the sale of stocks (with a progressive taxrate). Untill they sell the stocks, the wealth value of them are worthless to their holders, they then are only usefull to keep a hand on the company's direction/actions.
So rather than doing a wealth tax, close the loopholes and tax all income (regular income, stock sales, dividends, bonus, ...). Also have all transference of stocks, no matter in what context (eg. inheritance, gift, ...) be seen as a sale and thus taxed.
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I disagree with you on this. Sure there might be cops more open to the protestors (possibly same political ideas?), however it looks to me even in the video you showed that the cops realized they'd get overrun and possibly isolated if they make stand and instead just pull back and call/wait for reincorcement, possibly even redirecting manpower to evacuating the capitol instead.
In the video where you said 'they let them in', to me it looks more like the cops were trying to plug a hole, realizing how futile that attempt would be and instead moving out.
I also saw images from CNN from slightly before 5:15 where there clearly was a lot more police present and more police arriving constantly. I'd say these twitter pictures were just taken at the right angle at the right place at the right time. Afterall where are the protestors/rioters? There aren't any of the stairs and we don't have images from between the remaining protestors and the stairs, where the cops most likely would be positioned. Seeing how little protestors remain at that point, the police are possibly also relocated elsewhere in the surrounding.
There are several video's/images of cops standing against protestors and being pushed back/overrun.
I honesly don't know why you again need to make it seem like the cops in general let this happen, they didn't from what I can gather. They immediately asked for reinforcements when it was clear the protest was turning violent and tried to get to the actual capitol, they on several scenes clearly tried to make a stand, but weren't able to.
I'd like to see how you react when you are faced with maybe a dozen against several hundreds or more.
And I dislike any comparison with blm at this moment. BLM went on for days or more, so they would be more on alert after the first day. Now this was one official authorised protest that suddenly turned hostile. No one expected them to charge the capitol, they just weren't prepared.
Wasn't there a lot of initial chaos too on the outbreak of BLM protests?
And we all know things happened by police during BLM that shouldn't be condoned.
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Honestly putting the cufs on initially isn't really a show of anything, other than that the cops play it safe. He is a man in a house that is not his, whose owner is recently deceased. Putting on the cuffs untill things are cleared is the prefered option. Because once they are on, the officers might feel safer and act more composed and the risk that something goes horribly wrong is decreased. That the officer loosened the cops also to me indicates this might just be a standard safety precaution and isn't anything unusual.
As for the lady calling the cops. If you see a strange man in the home of a recently deceased neighbour, people might call the cops, no matter the skincolor call the police. My grandparents are also quite "paranoid" and fear things like burglary, crimes, ... happening to them or their neighbourhood, despite me, my parents and siblings living literally next to them. There is for so far I got from this video nothing that shows the the skincolor played a part. Could it have played a part? Ofcourse, but do we know it did? Not really. People should be carefull to not make everything about race in such circumstances.
Also he wasn't handcuffed in his own home. Yes, he was allowed to stay there, but saying it is his own home is just false. That is like saying a motel/hotel room is someones home because he is allowed to stay there. I don't exactly understand what this lawsuit is based on, maybe it is an American law/right, but here in Belgium, there is no legal grounds that a lawsuit against this action could ever stand. The only thing maybe is entering the house without consent, but we don't know what happened, did Furdge not hear them and they entered after no response? Did they see him walking around the house and kicked in the door? I don't know, but this would to me be the only possible grounds for a lawsuit to succeed: unlawfull entry.
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