As with everything, you can argue semantics if you want. Socialism can be only nations that own the means of production of which there are only the few above or it can mean any nation providing social services from tax revenues, that includes every nation. Suffice to say about Bernie's quote is the US has pursued a different course in health services than most other developed nations, one that yields a more expensive, inefficient market based system for something that is not rational, people do not make economic choices when dealing with pain or death. Also, 'markets' implies that involvement of commerce and politics i.e. the laws that limit price negotiations for prescription medicines for Medicare Part D patients... written by and for Big Pharma, pure corporate welfare. Healthcare should be a basic human function promoted by government to serve the people like roads and electricity (or internet access)
Actually China have a form of national healthcare system, but it does not extend to everyone, it is mostly for people in the cities. They would like to extend the coverage to the whole nation, but I think it will take some time as that's a lot of people to cover.
So when I said I want to see his "insane stretch of the term major country", what did you think I was implying? You already had a copypasta ready to go.
I thought you were implying exactly what you said, that Mr. Sanders was moronically wrong in what he said. So I googled the list of countries as referenced, and found that by most definitions of 'major countries' what he said was in fact true. I did assume a knee jerk reaction on your part because Mr. Sanders promotes democratic socialism. And as benign as that actually is across the Free World, American reactionaries jump on the term like it's arch villainy. The semantic issue is because "socialism" can mean anything from an actual government owned and managed economy, to the higher tax and benefits systems like in the Scandinavian countries have or just Obamacare. Every country has some "socialism", it's just a matter of degree.
You copypasta a list of countries with universal health care that is on most internets and had that planned for any response. You are probably the first one using it to represent it as a list of major countries though. Which definitions of major countries does it fit? Population, GDP, land mass don't work. Just curious.
TV sets per capita http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Media/Television-receivers/Per-capita or G20 countries maybe Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States and the European Union
Another haymaker by the semantic brawler - damn Dubious you got smoked. (note to caseyh - by "smoked" I don't mean he was taken to the smokehouse, and imbued with the luscious aroma of burning alder and giving him a delectable taste due to a reaction caused by nitirc oxide and his inherent sugars)
that is the nature of saying there is "one major country". If someone finds more, even one more, the statement is invalid. One vs two = semantics tho
Description of Red Herring A Red Herring is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. The basic idea is to "win" an argument by leading attention away from the argument and to another topic. This sort of "reasoning" has the following form: 1.Topic A is under discussion. 2.Topic B is introduced under the guise of being relevant to topic A (when topic B is actually not relevant to topic A). 3.Topic A is abandoned. Well played, my friend. Well played.
you might have a point if that wasn't my first post in the thread and Dubious' first post in the entire thread and I was the first one to comment on his quote. As it stands there was no ongoing discussion to distract from. Oh crap, semantics. The meaning of the word you posted a definition of is petty.
Time: Number of Uninsured Americans Near Historic Low But, hey; any time you can overturn a law based on a grammatical clause and adversely affect the lives of millions of people, you gotta do it.
