Why Can't America Be like Europe?

[kennetha]

50. Much too Simplistic, IMHO

You seem to think it's all about class warfare an the oligarchy blocking the will of the masses of America, dividing the people against themselves through the top down imposition false consciousness. Everything is about allowing the few to profit off the backs of the many, who if they just woke up and realized how united they were, would throw off the few.

Way to simple. Too many Americans hate other Americans. Too many Americans don't support redistributive policies because they think it redistributes what is theirs to "those people." And it's not just the doing of the wealthy elites that makes some people see other people as the undeserving other.

"Lower level" politics in is sweltering stew of all kinds of stuff that don't fit so nicely into your narrative of oligarchy. Fights of taxes and property values and crime and and sales taxes, and bond measures and traffic patterns and on and on on that in the aggregate have a huge effect on the structure and pace of America life. Sure monied interest are in there too, but just as one element among others.

And you are way too optimistic about the nature of our political system. Not without reason have few more recent democracies copied it. Read Linz -- The Perils of Presidentialism, for a nice critique of the limits of presidential democracy. Here:

http://scholar.harvard.edu/levitsky/files/1.1linz.pdf


Taxes are a big deal, infinitely more complicated than your simple narrative allows. First all, when you say no real benefits accrue to America but that they all go to shareholders (tax receipts to shareholders?) and military contractors, are you forgetting how much money we spend on entitlement programs already? Mostly benefit the old, to be sure. But they are a major constituency for the status quo. Can't get around that.

Problem with "politicians who serve human beings" is that human beings are intensely divided amongst themselves and very much at odds with one another.