I have no idea what you are arguing about or why its in the Bernie thread, I have never heard Bernie really advocating for what you want either. Who has claimed that we cannot afford a single payer health system? It's what I want. And that sums up exactly what you get when you engage with your ilk.
No, the entire conversation isn't about Bloomberg, dude wasn't even mentioned on the first page of this thread. Bernie did not say that Bloomberg should be disqualified because he's a billionaire. Warren just demolished him and did so without even really mentioning his wealth. When you bring up "But what about donating" my response was completely relevant to your question. What about it? Why does it matter, why did you bring it up? My response is it really shouldn't matter, because terrible people donate too, so there isn't some inherent goodness to donating when sometimes people donate selfishly. You then asked this question after I made a post about how some people are greedy to the point of sin, I said nothing about bloomberg then, you brought that up and then tried to pin that on me by asking what I had against Bloomberg and Gates. Our conversation also wasn't about bloomberg, at least I didn't want it to be.
Bernie said Bloomberg should not exist, his exact words. Any logical person would know my initial question was about Bloomberg, the entire conversation here is about Bloomberg and his fit to be president. I can't believe you are trying to portray it as something else.
You do know m4a is health INSURANCE for all Americans. Private hospitals will still exist. It frightens me that people who don't even understand the most basic fundamental aspects of Bernie's plan are so confident in dismissing it.
Lol at the American Dream comment. At some point in my lifetime - 4 decades - it seems as if the American Dream transformed into "become uber rich and billionaire!!". That's not the American Dream. The American Dream is the ideal by which equality of opportunity is available to any American, allowing the highest aspirations and goals to be achieved. Basically, it's social mobility, and upwards social mobility, for all with equal opportunity. Here's a ranking of countries by social mobility - https://www.visualcapitalist.com/ranked-the-social-mobility-of-82-countries/ USA ... not good. I'm not sure what's the point of multiple pages of arguing whether billionaires should "exist"? There's like 600 US billionaires. It's exceedingly exceedingly rare. Your kids are MUCH MUCH more likely, in America, to end up homeless. We saw on the stage last night with Bloomberg how dumb the current system is. Bloomberg: "I'm not ashamed of my wealth, I worked hard for it! ... and I'm giving it away!!" Super tone deaf, and dumb. As for healthcare. Healthcare for all. It's a human right. This isn't complicated. I can't tell you the number of people I've seen on this topic that have gotten bogged down in the terminology - which is basically common across politics now, and sucks. "Bernie is a socialist!". "M4A removes choice!!" Yada, yada. So dumb. But even if you didn't think it was a human right... the current system is completely f'd. Anyone who has themselves or anyone close to them been through a major healthcare event in the last 5-10 years should know how completely f'd up it is. From bad doctors, to insane billing, etc., etc., etc. As for "how can we actual get it done in practice?!?! It's such a hard change and will take a long time!!" Are we serious with this?? It's just called running a good organization. Of which there are thousands upon thousands of businesses doing that. You do it by blocking and tackling and letting the smart folks do smart things and good management folks do good management things, etc, etc. A fair comeback might be "sure, but there are too many idiots in government for it to work!!" ... and that might be true ... but then stop voting in people that are beholden to lobbyists, corporations or are outright idiots, hypocrits and bad people themselves.
In a good faith discussion, what do you think Bernie means by "shall not exist"? Did he follow it up with anything such as "should not exist WHEN so and so"? What was that "so and so"? Can we have a good faith discussion here. Not a single individual who heard Bernie in good faith takes that as Michael Bloomberg shouldn't literally exist. Also, it's obvious donations by billionares aren't working when 40% of Americans aren't receiving sufficient check ups with doctors. Also, in a representative Democracy, we pool money from the public and the public decides where it should be spent through the public's interest. Billionares can have so many different motivations to donate. Many just donate for pr purposes. That usually results in many necessities for s functioning society to be overlooked because when billionares donate they aren't going through a harsh legislative process through representation of the common person.
So let's play a game. I'll give you reasons why we should connect Trump to violent rhetoric and actions from his supporters through words spoken out of Trump's mouth and you do the same for Bernie. Your turn.
I'm a health care worker and I completely agree with you that we should have universal healthcare. The question is how do we get there. The solution is simple, and it's mostly all people want to talk about. I don't think that's why Bernie is a borderline commie. His comments on wealth and conspiracies about the establishment are why I do. I think at some point we need to bite the bullet and get universal healthcare. I hope we do soon. I've seen more people suffer from a lack of health insurance, first hand, than most on these boards. We can't just speak it into existence. Sometimes, Bernie Bros and Sanders himself, seem to think we can. There's a lot of questions about it. There's questions about legality of shutting down whole industries and how it can be done. It's going to take a long term commitment and long term democratic control.
What are his "conspiracies"? No we aren't going to "speak m4a into existence". But an honest effort to shift the overton window would help greatly and a president with his bully pulpit who has advocated for 40 years would really shift that overton window.
Who has claimed that?!?!?!?!?! are you serious???? Jesus Christ I mean it's in this very thread, but I digress and.... you have not heard Bernie mention that we should stop wasting money on wars all over the world?? ok sir I'll politely see myself out of this thread.
I don't think these Bernie supporters understand just how much he's wanting to spend and what's left after that to spread among we the people. It is literally 71-76% of the entire US GDP annually for a decade. https://www.city-journal.org/bernie-sanders-expensive-spending-proposals This article is a really good read on the numbers and supports the numbers I posted yesterday in one of these threads on the subject. The idea that a wealth tax is going to provide those funds is a joke in itself. There are only 621 Billionaires in the country. The total net worth of the top 400 is only $2.9T. Even taxing them at 100% of their net worth funds less than 3% of Bernie's spending plans. Then there's the fact that direct taxes have to be apportioned .... What's going to happen there is these billionaires are going to buy property as in general possessions / property are exempt from federal tax (Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co.1895) and guess what happens to the American dream of little pink houses ? .... The price just soared and the entire country has a housing market worse than California. And you know what's really comical is that corporations headed by the billionaire class are going to be the recipient of much of that spending. Sanders supporters are not only failing at math , they are failing at common sense.
[/QUOTE] 1.) Even Pete Buttigieg and others have questioned why he inspires such hate. Saying a class of people "Shouldn't exist" and then saying its not hate is strange. If you don't see his hate of LOTS OF WEALTH than you're just blind. He doesn't hate wealth, because he is wealthy, he just hates people much wealthier than him. 2.) Blaming others for the problems in society.....sounds productive and not divisive. If they were black or female or gay it would be wrong but because their bank account hits a bigger level its perfectly ok. Sounds fair! 3.) Hate in any form is dangerous. 4.) Just because i'm not a billionaire or gay or female doesn't mean i'm ok with people hating them and demonizing people. Its just a terrible thing to do and that you consider yourself liberal and don't attack hate speech shows your hypocrisy.
1. No matter what a few Bernie Bros have done, it doesn't compare to the hate inpsired by the person against whom he'd be running. Billionaires don't really qualify as a class of people. They are a tiny subset of a subset of another class. He is wanting to change the power structure they control. 2. Leaders and those who make decisions should be held accountable. It's the whole principle behind a democracy. Holding people accountable is part of why our nation was founded and our bill of rights. So yes, folks should be held accountable and blamed for their misdeeds that affect society as a whole. They should be blamed for what they've done that has wronged others. 3. What Bernie is proposing in regards to billionaires isn't dangerous to society at all or even to the Billionaires. 4. Again, those that have abused power and exploited others should be called out and held accountable.
No, the entire conversation here isn't about Bloomberg, he wasn't even mentioned in the first page of this thread as it was all about Bernie and his plans. Bernie has also said this before and that's where others were trying to correct you there and explain why he said that. He still said nothing about Bloomberg's wealth being disqualifying, Bernie doesn't really take that position as he's rich himself. Bernie is not trying to eliminate rich people, he's trying to make it so it's harder for uber rich multi billionaires to even exist. That's always been his argument and at the end of the day either you tackle that argument or you dishonestly try to tackle some other argument that no one has made.
So if they are a small subset of another class then people should be able to say they shouldn't exist? Imagine if someone said that about about transgenders. If someone did something wrong they should be held accountable but I don't see anyone saying anyone broke the law or cheated on their taxes and got away with it. I just see someone saying someone shouldn't have more money than them. It's hate, pure and simple. Its divisive hate and using hate and envy to blame them for everything. Can't you see that?
