Do you know how much the U.S made by staying out of both world wars, loaning to the allies and then joining towards the tail end?
Take a guess?
For WW2, a net loss of $35.2 billion.
Please refer to detailed explanation and references listed earlier.
In the meantime I’m going to go move some iron.
Wow you are labouring under some seriously false pretences.
Please excuse me, as I am behind in this thread and making my way through it post by post.
An enjoyable discussion dharma, thanks for chiming in. In my opinion however, your post indicates several misunderstandings about how the US works.
First and very importantly simplifying the discussion down to “we can do it for x million by taxing x million, you can do it with y” ignores several of the fundamental differences I alluded to–as did Mufasa–in my first post. This is fundamental to many business people, but one of the things that all businesses understand is scale-ability. The funding (and infrastructure) required to put any set of policies or operations in place as a population or market grows increases at a faster rate than the market share. Much like muscular power grows as a power of 2 and volume grows as a power of 3 for the human body.
This means, very simply, that the amount of tax money required to implement something of this size in the US is not linearly scaled with the population. Not even close. It would take significantly more money.
Further, it ignores the fundamental differences in our cultural values as a nation that we see in governance. These are codified into our Constitution and Bill of Rights. They make up the fundamental bedrock of our country both in documents and in cultural values. You seem to be thinking of our Federal government as analogous to the extremely centralized power centers of European systems and indeed even the UK… where the Federal government holds all the power. This is a FUNDAMENTAL difference–we as Americans do not accept that and codified hard limitations into our Founding as a nation. This goes far, far beyond simple tax revenue. We hold the power of the individual far higher and we do not accept the same amount of centralized power in EU countries as necessary OR desirable in ours.
Finally, even though we are often painted as all the same to people across the pond, we have 50 states with VASTLY different cultures–even as different as Germany from Spain (or the UK from, say, Serbia). This is under-appreciated by everyone unless they have spent time living here. Understandably so, but still a critical error when assessing our political issues. That is why Mufasa and others have analogized the healthcare situation with the EU developing one single centralized system for everybody on the continent–it’s much more accurate.
We haven’t even covered the constitutional question yet, but it is a fundamental to our identity as a nation as is the first point I covered. This means it is not just a practical matter for bureaucrats or tax men.
Additionally, the reason Mufasa and others talk about wanting to see the EU do it successfully on a Continental scale is that they are alluding indirectly to these 3 things, as well as others. The tax money required is only 1 part of that. This is what I meant by “isomorphic mimicry” in my first post. All of these issues are fundamental issues to us as a nation.
Pushharder is an irascible bastard, that’s why :). Seriously. In reality, it’s a different sort of conversation here in this forum— a bit more “locker room” than “dinner table”. It remains an annoyance for me but I can assure you he is not triggered.
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Not even close to true. First, limited voting rights does not make a totalitarian government, secondly your government has evolved over the centuries and I am sure you would agree all countries do. I am surprised you would take this tack, it’s rather beneath you. Push probably bit your head off for this one
Hey man, thanks for your detailed and interesting responses, sorry my responses have been somewhat hit and miss but I am responding to several people in the thread.
What do you make of the polls indicating almost 60% of Americans support universal healthcare? You mentioned in the initial post and have readdressed here, that cultural and economic differences mean most Americans view the reach of government differently. If these polls are to be believed it seems culturally the U.S is becoming more in line with the E.U regarding views of the public regarding the fundamental role of government?
Other nations have amended he constitution to make way for universal healthcare haven’t they? do you see universal healthcare coming to the US in the next three decades ?
If it did, not saying it will but if it does, how do you see American society, culture and economics changing because of it?
We constitute 72% of NATO defense budget. We spend 650 billion dollars on it. http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_67655.htm
The entire public defense spending of the UK for national defense (not NATO) is 45 billion as of last year according to the official UK stats. Spain’s was about 10 billion, France about 46 billion, Germany about 36 billion (all for national defense, rather than NATO). UK, France, and Germany are the next three biggest parts of the NATO defense budge according to NATO itself, at 60, 43, and 39 billion dollars.
I am perfectly fine with withdrawing 450 billion of our budget to NATO. I do not think the EU countries would be fine doubling or tripling their NATO spending to make up the difference. The economic disaster created by the taxes needed to come up with that would be ridiculous.
But hey, I am sure if we withdrew that money we could use it to pay off our national debt and actually make some headway on it.
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LOL. At least you know that Chomsky kook is intellectually dishonest. There are a lot of people that do not understand this…
I politely talked to him back and forth and he answered by saying this:
My response isn’t beneath me, it pointed out by my country and your country have through history been totalitarian, unfree places and also have accomplished great things. I fail to see how that is at all a troubling position. I think my reply was rather reserved for someone who out of nowhere attacked my homeland in this and a few other replies.
We wouldn’t dream of spending that much on “defense” though. If we broke from NATO and created an EU security alliance, we would only have to match China and Russia in spending, they spend a fraction of what the U.S spends, which they need to maintain their empire (not using that in a derogatory way but in the way jocko willink does etc)
The US spends insane amounts on military and often in expeditions most Europeans think make us tangibly less safe. So we don’t rely on the U.S, we would simply bump up national military spending in each EU country and match Russia and China and be more than safe.
A couple things here. First a general note that you’re on the minority side of opinion in this forum so don’t get siege mentality with us Yanks giving you a hard time :). As offensive as we are, to continue the locker room analogy from my other post, its all in good (rather prickly) fun. Also this is a major cultural difference showing up between the two sides of the Atlantic haha.
Regarding polls, I look at methodology very closely. You get absolutely wild swings in survey poll results depending on a) who you ask b) when you ask them and c) HOW you phrase the questions. Polling is notorious for use of leading questions as well as spurious if not outright incorrect conclusions drawn from a crappy series of leading or misphrased questions. This has happened routinely–frequently even–in every election for the last 30 years at least. It’s a fundamental property of human psychology as well as a universally known weakness of polling among the people who do the polling. This has been openly manipulated in the past by some scoundrels as well as under-appreciated many other honest people doing their work. So I do not place any stock in those specific numbers until looking at the specifics.
In addition there are a lot of people–some polling data to the contrary–who like the IDEA of having universal healthcare, but don’t want to spend the extra money required for it. This is in reference to Bernie Sanders’ candidacy and was assessed on Sanders’ supporters. Given that they lean very left for Americans, you see another trend: “I am okay with it, but I don’t want to pay for it”. That is frankly not sustainable. My opinions are rather low on Sanders and his supporters but that is beyond this particular topic.
It may come here in 30 years and it may not. I am not Nostradamus and cannot say. It concerns me because I do not want it here. I value my choice to get or NOT get insurance as my individual life choice–and if you can’t control that you don’t really own yourself or your liberty. If it comes I view us as becoming much more dependent on the State, which I despise, and much less independent. I also see our economy as becoming very heavily taxed, which I despise. I’d rather be dead frankly. Those are personal opinions of course. In absolute terms our tax burden soars, politicians get even more power, and the individual loses more.
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I can agree with your final sentence. However you are still fundamentally inaccurate when you refer to the US–as it was founded–as totalitarian. I simply do not know where to start with that one it is so wildly off the mark.
Well, if it makes you feel any better, many of us here in this country also think some of those expeditions make us less safe as well.
However that wasn’t the point of my post. You would either need to spend that money or dissolve NATO as it is presently structured. There is no alternative to making that choice, and that was the point. NATO exists in its present form as what you term the “EU security alliance” and it exists so precisely because of the money we pour into it. What you propose here by refusing to spend that much on NATO pending our hypothetical withdrawal of funds creates a massive power vacuum that Russia and China would certainly take advantage of. If the EU is interested in maintaining the geopolitical balance they would HAVE to increase spending by that much, or fundamentally restructure all of NATO’s outlays. This would be a lengthy and disorganized process and it would allow Russia all the time in the world to strengthen their position and their war-like tendencies.
This isn’t some penis measuring contest with our spending vs. others, or our foreign policy, which I have issues with. It’s pointing out the fact that in order to keep yourselves safe in either a Security Alliance or NATO with 450 less billion of our dollars…ALL of the EU countries would need to drastically increase spending to roughly the levels I indicated. That is not a choice. The alternative would make you less safe and less secure as both Russia and China have big ambitions.
I think America shouldn’t have to be due to pressure from allies, or want to be for private interests, the police of the world.
I think we could remain strong allies with a special connection through our heritage and many shared values (western philosophy, literature, human rights, arts etc), however I would prefer a partnership of trade first and foremost and would like to see NATO break up.
So here is how it would go down military spending wise:
China 215 billion
Russia 66.4 billion
Combined EU 192.5 billion
The EU has an active military personel of 1.6 million not including reserves. We have 546 ships, 2,448 aircraft & 7,695 battle tanks. Our military is a professional volunteer force mostly with some nations still using conscription, though even those tend to also have a professional volunteer core of servicemen/career soldiers. We also have nuclear capabilities so any all out war with either is pretty, pretty slim.
We also have several friendly countries, from ex colonies and commonwealth nations as allies.
I don’t see any situation where I am worried should we end NATO alliance. I think it will work to the benefit of both America and Europe.
Also regarding income and healthcare as the discussion began before morphing to geopolitics:
the UK’s median household income in 2013/2014 dollars is ~27,200 pounds. That translates into 39,000 US dollars with the current exchange rate.
By comparison the US’s median income for 2013 is ~52,000. Effectively our pre-tax median income is 13,000 greater and we pay less taxes. Even considering we spent an average of 8,700 on healthcare that year (which is higher than the median, but I can’t find a reliable median cost indicator without doing a lot more searching than I care to do), we are ahead. I personally have no desire to go backwards. I value my choice to do what I want with my money.
When you say even with 8,700 on healthcare you are ahead, are you factoring in what you also pay into welfare, medicaid, all tax and the healthcare costs on top?
Because for someone earining 32k in the UK, the tax rate is 6400 and that includes, healthcare, welfare, access to mental health professionals, government aid for rent if you lose your job, government housing if you lose your house, etc etc.
That seems much greater value in my opinion.
I think though that this isn’t an economic debate for Americans as it is a philosophical one. Well for American’s who are on your side of the issue at least.
Christopher Hitchens one of my favourite writers of all time loved America and he said one thing he never understood after 20 years of living there was that many poor people would rather not get universal healthcare though it was in their interest, because of what he considered a strange defiance against government and help.
As you can see I too don’t understand it entirely but I can at least respect what I suspect is the underlying sentiment of rugged American individualism and notions of freedom from government.
At the same time I just can’t get behind that same position, just as I am sure you could never get behind mine.
Well the point of my posts on NATO was to compare the status quo with and without the amount of money we pour in currently and what would be required to maintain that. A discussion of a changing geo-political picture is a different topic, although interesting. As for the changing picture I think you should be worried about China and Russia. They are ideological rivals but often times both historically and otherwise practical allies. Militarily this is very problematic for you. China’s military by itself has over 2.3 million active members, with another 230,000 in their navy and 469 ships.
Do I think war would be imminent? No of course not. But it would be an unfavorable power shift for a dispersed security alliance in the absence of a NATO.
Maybe this is just my western privilege 
but I think the United states and british Armed forces alone are miles ahead of both China and Russia regarding our forces training, equipment, experience and professionalism.
While we wouldn’t be tied to NATO alliances, I would be almost certain any act of war by China and Russia on the US would certainly cause the EU to enter on your side.
As I am almost certain the US would side with us. Maybe I am out of touch but I crtainly see that always being the case.
This way we can pay our own ways but also as throughout history fight with one another against a common enemy. We didn’t need NATO to do that in the past.
Right–and that is pretty much where we are at in terms of the aggregate opinion of the country–rugged individualism is one of our cultural values. That was also part of my point above although I should have probably pointed it out explicitly.
These are reasons why
a) you can’t just say ‘x tax dollars for x people’ because the real differences are cultural, so mimicking one aspect of policy (tax for healthcare, or healthcare system in more general terms) doesn’t work. That is what I termed “isomorphic mimicry”, although I did not coin the phrase.
b) Europeans express dismay at our healthcare system in general 
Cultural values are much more intransigent and fundamental than others, and they underpin our traditional views on healthcare and other subjects.
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