I entirely agree that masks should be worn. I said that earlier and some people just don’t want to admit the fact that that I did say that and that that would probably greatly reduce the issue. American’s not wearing them is an unreasonable problem we do face, but it is a difficult rule to enforce as we have seen. It’s lockdowns that I have a real issue with, and that is perfectly reasonable hence my statements above. You can call me extreme and that the socialist/communist arguments don’t hold water. But forcing people out of there livelyhoods will cause more issues than benifits. You have to see everything from a whole different perspective from what most people on here seem to believe to understand that.
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I think you may have misunderstood what I mean by false dichotomy, since this response does not make sense. A false dichotomy (or false dilemma) is a fallacy where only two alternatives are presented in an argument, when actually many other possibilities exist.
Your arguments defending the approach of the USA during this pandemic paints an alternative picture of “everyone locked into their homes and starving to death”. However, the reality of how this pandemic could be handled involves many other possible paths. Just look at South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and really many other countries outside of the USA. Many countries are managing this pandemic with a much lower death rate (by several orders of magnitude), which, in addition to being a more humanitarian approach, also has economic benefits, since deaths and illnesses hurt the economy.
Let me be clear, no one wants economic hardships. Your arguments are depicting it as a false choice between economic damage versus lives lost. It is not that simple. Lots of people dying and getting sick also hurts the economy, and aggressively stopping transmission is one possible path (that some countries like New Zealand have actually managed) to suppress the pandemic and save many lives while also avoiding the prolonged economic hardships of more desperate measures.
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What do you even mean by “socialist/communist”? It is unclear how you see the handling of the pandemic as related to socialism and communism?
What do these words mean to you?
Let me further clarify. No one likes lockdowns. No likes economic hardship either. Everyone has an interest to end this pandemic as quickly and painlessly as possible.
The failure of the USA to handle the pandemic is not simply a matter of lockdown vs no lockdown, but rather a whole host of other measures that we failed to properly implement. Consider the simple issue of mask wearing, which you raise
The crux of this problem is that mask wearing has become a politicized issue here, and huge part of this problem is that Trump has repeatedly mocked and discouraged mask use.
As a result, we’ve seen much lower mask use among his supporters, and even anti-mask protests coming from his base.
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I could think of one argument why socialism (not sure about communism) would actually be helpful in this environment: one of the key ideas of socialism is carrying the burden of poverty with the whole society. That is, rich citizens pay a larger part of their income to taxes than poor citizens, who sometimes do not even have to pay taxes, which goes to social plans to fund those poor citizens (in the form of welfare support, free education, free healthcare, etc.).
The US is practically an underdeveloped country as far as social plans are concerned (healthcare & good education only for the wealthy, and welfare being embarrassingly low), thus having to call a lockdown is more painful exactly because the US is so anti-socialist.
Yet, still, as yebellz tries to point out, it’s not a choice between “lockdown and people starve” and “business as usual and take the dead for granted”. With proper regulations, much of society can continue while keeping the reproduction factor below 1. You could lockdown specific businesses, or only put districts in lockdown when the cases are too high, close certain types of shops on specific days to prevent people from going out shopping, make wearing a mask / washing hands / social distancing mandatory, limit the number of people allowed to be in a group / room / building, temporarily subsidise delivery services (esp. food delivery), etc.
What absolutely doesn’t help anybody, is spreading misinformation about COVID and COVID regulations, since this has the result that many proper measures lose their effect. Ironically, regulations as I mentioned above only work when the people understand them and comply with them, thus Trump spreading misinformation has the effect of both increasing the harm done to the economy, increasing the number of people infected and increasing the likelihood that a lockdown becomes necessary.
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I never understood why that is so. If you put down the cost of running the system - apart from the infrastructure itself - it really is quite a cheap public service, compared to some others I can think of.
I’ll give you an example, some years ago an amount of money was embezzled by a “legal entity” that was created in/by our municipality. Their job was to make some public “good works”. The mount embezzled ? Around 50.000 euro. Let’s say that their budget, for a small municipality like ours, was 10 times that. 500.000 euro and all they did all year was organise some cultural events, pretend of fixing a couple of buildings and embezzle that money.
Meanwhile the local school has 11 teachers, I think.
Salary cost? Let’s say 11 teachers * 1200 euro * 12 months = 158400 euros
Running the school (oil for heating, electric and other bills, A4, ink for the photocopier etc) ? Let’s say = 5000 euro for oil, 3000 euro for the other bills.
What else is there? even if they splurge they cannot be costing more than 200.000 per year.
meanwhile only ONE “public company” run by the local municipality costs a lot more than that.
Heck, do you know how much money our mayor paid for EXTRA garbage collectors during the summer, while a pandemic was going on, so the was no extra garbage anyway? 650.000 euro. For EXTRA collectors we did not need. 
The mayor now bought a bronze statue of Poseidon to place it in the village he lives, near his house. Cost? 24.000 euro. For a bronze replica.
If I was not used to that kind of nonsense, I’d be annoyed now, but this is how public money rolls.
That does not mean that I am not tired of hearing that education or some other actually useful thing is expensive, when we literally “make it rain” with public money on some stuff that no sane person would ever buy if they were to pay out of their own pockets.
Fine, but he definitely did the sharpie thing 
Well, that is what being in a position of leadership actually means.
This is why a general or a CEO is actually paid so much … to take the tough decisions and take responsibility for them.
I do not get that “oh, no people blame the leader” sentiment. That’s why a person is called a leader. It is literally half the job. 
A lot of them did mess up, indeed. They should take responsibility for their part of the command chain.
If you want to be fair, you should notice that people called him racist way earlier than that and for actual valid reasons/policies or statements that are on tape.
Quite so, but we still have eyes and brains. Unlike past times where a politician could make a statement and it would be hard to find a source or a video for it, now we are flooded with actual statements and analysis of real policies.
Truth might be elusive on some claims, but there are plenty of facts to go around and we can make informed decisions based on them. Feigning total ignorance and having an “meh, who knows?” excuse in the “era of information” is a but unreasonable, if you ask me.
No, we do not have to do such a thing.
Maybe that “our side or the other side” is very much in vogue in this false dichotomy loving environment, but the fact is that we have no obligation to pick a side. We can actually have our own opinion.
That is irrelevant. You already have put more thought into what goes on about politics than a lot of people that do vote and you have a well articulated opinion. And that is all you need in a civil discussion.
Age does not suddenly impart you knowledge or wisdom 
Plus, to expand on my earlier point, you have an advantage that most people do not have. You already take trips outside of your local environment or sphere and you read what happens to other places, where people do not have any real stakes on your elections.
In this topic, for example, Gia who is also from Greece, mentioned that we have free universities. We also have centralized healthcare that still works, somehow, when you have major health issues and you do not have to go bankrupt to go make a minor operation or have your leg stitched after a sports scuffle.
Beyond any sides and politics, in your shoes, wouldn’t you say that it would be fair to wonder “wait a minute? Greece? That backwater bankrupt country has these things? And we don’t? Why?”"
Fair questions, wouldn’t you say? Even asking the questions puts you above the “average voter”, let alone actually trying to answer them or think about them, again, beyond, and -isms and party politics? 
That is rarely the case in politics. Usually, the best do not ever get to run, you see …
Well, not everyone is Galileo in front of the inquisition though. A lot of people tend to just bank on going the “other way” of an issue just to gain fame in case it turns out to be that way.
Take Stanford University’s professor Ioannidis … oh, boy, just because he is Greek we have been innundated with all the things he said about CoViD and how it is “just a flu” and he has numbers and figures to back things up. Two months of free publicity worldwide for him.
Until of course he published his “numbers” and his research was performed on people he gathered via facebook ads and promising “free covid tests” in the early months where noone could find one. Needless to say that his “research”, just from that “impartial” way of finding test subjects, was utter non-sense and was rightfully disregarded.
But if you hear the Ioannidis-fanclub say it (most of them haven’t even read the paper - which makes it ironic) he is being “persecuted by the system” … yeah … science has its flaws, but at least it is a method which has some reasonable checks and balances and quality requirements to be done right.
5% is a lot. If 5% of our population is “not going to be fine” (I am not talking about dying) and they have to just be admitted to a hospital, that is 10.700.000 = 535.000 people … yeah, that won’t do, obviously.
5% sounds small, but it is not.
Whenever you hear a percentage always ask the question: 5% of what ?
That doesn’t make them right, though. You expressed a sincere worry about “finding the truth” and the sad truth is that in this case, that lack of worry is what makes you “number 1” on many unfortunate lists and, despite what some people claim, Covid is not going to be gone by November 5th.
Ah, the “I’ll risk my life to have a job” thing, eh?
You forget something obvious though … you might be willing to risk your life to work as a waiter at PizzaHut, for example, and that is fine because your life/rent might indeed depend on that salary.
But, even if the store is open, not many people are going to be willing to risk their lives to go out and eat a pizza. No customer’s life depends on a pizza
The economy would suffer and shrink even if everything was open.
You are not supposed to be scared about it.
Communism and socialism have nothing to do with the virus and the measures.
Plus, do not get me started with those words being used as generic scarecrows over any possible issue.
Let’s not go that route?
That’s not what the soy bean farmers said when the soy bushel price collapsed due to unneeded trade bravado. See, I can do that “what about” thing as well
Socialism and subsidies worked for them just fine. They just pretend to not like them. A couple of dozens of billion dollars of other people’s money where given to them and noone cried “nooo it is socialism” … I wonder why? 
Source? Fox Business:
Not even Fox dared remind their viewers the word “socialism” in that article, but if it is, let’s say, a program that might cost a few million dollars that might provide foodstamps for poor people? You know that the S-word is going to be mentioned at least ten times. You looked for truth earlier, you know that’s true.
Let’s not go that route, indeed.
If you scratch the surface paint, you’ll be surprised on how much of those “subsidies” exist and on whose pockets they end up.
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I fully agree that socialist policies would be very helpful in mitigating some of the financial problems faced by people during this pandemic. Again, I agree that the USA is shamefully backward when it comes to social welfare. I think the two roots of this problem is the abhorrent greed of the ruling class and an all too common perception among many Americans that “socialism/communism = bad/evil” without giving much thought about what these concepts even mean. Perhaps some of this is a regrettable hangover from the Cold War era. The words “socialism” and “communism” are wildly thrown around by American conservatives to label many things that they object to, with little semblance to their original meaning nor any sense of hypocrisy, while they happily support government subsidies for their own special interests.
I’ve asked TheGoban to clarify their usage of these words in this discussion, since it is unclear what point they are trying to make with statements like “Communism and socialism don’t work” in this context, and it would be unfair for me to immediately characterize their words as the typical American conservative scare usage. However, despite asking for clarification several times, they have not offered anything to indicate otherwise.
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I disagree with all of you here for the most part on a number of things. That being said, I would in fact like to apologize for many of my comments coming out as snarky, and I do understand that other people are entitled to there own beliefs, and that I could be wrong on a number of things.
I am going to leave this discussion entirely now (despite saying that a little while back already). While what I have said is based on a lot of assumptions, a great deal of what you all are saying is as well. I could likely refute a great deal of what has been posted since then, but it would likely take hours.
The one thing I will say, regarding communism/socialism (and what I believe on the matter), since I have been picked on about it considerably, is that I would rather not put my gut into an ideology that has consistently failed time and time again in history. I would rather not play around with theoretical ideas that historically don’t work out. And when people are forced out of there jobs and livelihood that is an attack on America and a possible concern with something I don’t stand and that is a risky gamble. And one thing turns into the next, and the next, and the next.
I am proud of my country (as most of you are with your countries). It isn’t perfect, but I am proud of it. I don’t want to see what we have built up be torn down with things that sound good but probably won’t work.
I know I will get a lot of hate and disagreement for saying this but I do have a quick historical parallel to make that really sums up my argument regarding lockdowns and the pandemic. Let’s think about the Russian aristocracy before the rise of the Soviet Union. I am probably over simplifying this to an extent, but it is good enough for this context:
People were upset with the current difficulties and evils they were facing prior to the rise of the Soviets, hence they wanted something better. The ideology of communism sounded good to them, because in theory it sounded better. Thus communism took hold and though it was very gradual and things seemed alright at first, before people knew it, everything was much worse and millions of people died.
Now let’s look at coronavirus. People are upset with the 200,000+ people that have died so far. It truly is terrible and I really am sorry that those lives are gone due to people being selfish and not cooperating. Now let’s all point fingers at this terror and say we want it changed. Eradicated. Reasonable? Yes. Lockdowns sound very good because we crunch the virus back dramatically. So people play along with the game to try to save lives. But now the government sees that people can be tricked into believing that they should be controlled and dictated and, above all, there minds are locked into only thinking about coronavirus and its horrors. Maybe the government even has good intentions at first and slowly makes small poor changes to America. But now they have seen what people can believe. Before we know it, many more lives have been lost than through the coronavirus and the true evil of communism is witnessed. Another lovely picture to be painted, hmm?
This is purely hypothetical and I could be wrong. And I pray I am wrong. But, before you all say that my parallel is insane and go after me for my “extremist” views, realize that something very similar has happened before in the past. You are warning me about my views on the lockdown and the virus; I am warning you about something bad that is still very possible as a result of encouraging this sort of an idea. If it quacks like a duck, it is quite possibly a duck, and it is a sad hole to fall down.
The reason why socialism and communism are so terrible is partially because it is a tempting thing to hope that they work out just as they are designed (for the most part). It sounds and rationally makes sense to be wonderful even though it has never worked out that way. Sure there are always some people that it works out great for, but that is not the case for the vast majority of everyone (historically). I would rather live with the hardships of capitalism as a common person than gamble with what I could possibly face under those ideologies. You say I need to educate myself under what communism actually means, I want all of you to learn what it has actually done. And while I would like to talk about why something that seems to be so good turns out to actually be bad, it would be a long and difficult thing to analyze and debate. But it all comes down to the fact that, when a leadership has a considerable amount of power and control over a lot of people, things will eventually go wrong.
I hate this pandemic and I am deeply sorry for all the tragic losses. I always wear a mask and social distance as much as I can, and I don’t intentionally want anyone to get sick. I believe everyone should do the same. But when we play around with ideas let’s first look at a much larger picture and what could possibly go wrong, as well as turn to history when possible. It is perfectly possible for us to go over our heads. Let’s not assume that an American lockdown (or in any other country) will absolutely be a good idea without looking at the bigger picture. Realize there is always that risk, as with anything in life, and think accordingly. There are, in fact, many people in America that want our entire country redone and turned in a Socialist/communist regime. They hate us horribly and, believe it or not, many of them are aware of the problems that could come out because of this and simply don’t care. And so it is perfectly reasonable to be opposed to this concept of a lockdown when there is a real suspicion of it being a big stepping to stone to overthrowing the country.
Let’s not gamble with something we think could be good before looking at the past. Call me crazy. Call me extreme and ridiculous. But I would rather look at what has actually happened in the past overall instead of confining myself to coronavirus, coronavirus and the economy, how ideas from communism and socialism might work with small tidbits here and there, etc…)
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I would like to say that, a far as I am concerned, I took the time to write all that just because you are young, you deserve to be heard and to be taken seriously, but you also deserve to have an informed opinion.
Now that last part is less something that you deserve to be given and it is mostly an obligation by yourself, for yourself, to acquire.
In that regard, you do not really need to answer/refute all those things to us, but in order for this discussion to really have a positive result for you and to be worth your time, you really need to invest some time and answer/refute all those things to yourself
Think them over, see if you can really do it, what parts of your ideas, arguments, opinions and knowldge/facts really hold water. That is what a good discussion is all about. Learning new things, re-evaluating your position and if you are correct in what you think, then the re-evaluation will strengthen your position, not weaken it.
Provided, of course, that you do that extra step of actually thinking over what was discussed. That, unfortunately, is something that fewer and fewer people are willing to do as time passes.
The only thing I want to comment is that you should really try to keep equal standards for everything.
You said that communism alone, in its pure form, didn’t work whenever it was tried. That is true.
You also said that you’d take your chances with capitalism. implying that it was somehow more efficient. That is not true. Whenever it was tried alone, in its pure form, capitalism didn’t work either.
Do you know who Martin Shkreli is? Do you know that he raised within one day the cost of a very cheap drug to hundreds of dollars per pill? ( from 13.5 dollars to 750 dollars per pill, to be exact ) … That’s Capitalism alone, with no “regulations”. You think that works? And if you do, would you have had the same opinion if that medication was something you needed? Think about it.
Enter socialism, which is more or less a combination of those two extreme ends.
That is what you have had in the US for decades, make no mistake.
You (not you specifically, I mean as a society) are just afraid of the word itself, but in practice? It is all around you. Remember the soy farmers that gladly took other people’s money as subsidies. You cannot get more socialist than that, but if you go around those states and ask what they think about socialism they will consider it anathema. All talk and bluster. But in reality. Reality is different.
You do not have to think and answer on any of these things to me or anyone else.
I do enjoy a good argument, but those are not things that I write to be contrary or be annoying. I am taking this time out of my day because I like to believe that young people deserve to be spoken to like adults that have had decades of experience.
I believe that we, as older people, have the obligation to provide with them with questions … they, in turn, have the obligation to seek the answers for themselves if they want to be called citizens. If they want to have their own character, their own opinion, their own personality.
Those things cannot be borrowed or copied. Those are things you build for yourself, with your own hands. Incidentally, those are the kinds of things people are proud of. Being proud over a place of origin (an accident of birth) and for accomplishments of people past is nothing to be proud of. I am from Greece. After 3200 years of recorded history ( 11.5 times more than the States ) I can tell you that this kind of mindset does not cut it. The world is filled with crumbled ancient empires.
That’s my two cents on that
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I would like to add that China is pretty successful for being a socialist state. I’m not buying the “history consistently shows it fails” on this part.
I still don’t understand what socialism / communism has to do with lockdowns. From your post, it appears as if you confuse it with abuse of power, authoritarianism or even fascism, e.g. in this sentence:
I’d like to say that I agree with this single sentence, and that I see it as one of the major problems with the US democracy, where the president holds an irresponsibly large amount of power.
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You know, it’s funny how the first thing you mention is a scandal about his kid, and then some vague rumors. When I want to mention some stuff worth considering about a person, I start with their more obvious things that deserve considering, not with whatever irrelevant.
If we are including children in the equation, then we should also include Trump’s family, who is very prominently and literally part of the current administration and all the scandals about all of them. That would be fun.
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This entire argument invoking communism and socialism is a deflection from the discussion about what could have been and still should be done better during this crisis. Frankly, I’m not even hoping for much from Trump, and just wish that he would stop mocking mask use and disparaging the advice and expertise of scientists and doctors.
It is a false dichotomy to suggest that the only alternative to how the USA has mishandled the pandemic is a slippery slope toward an authoritarian communist regime. Again, we only have to look at other countries to see that they have not collapsed into authoritarian communism, while they handled the pandemic much better than the US.
The real danger of thinking in only these extremes, and viewing the world in such black and white terms of communist vs capitalist systems, is that it seeks to dismiss the faults that our society currently has, by arguing that there is only one possible alternative that is much worse. It shuts down discussion, progress, and growth toward a better society. It is also ironic since the American system does already include many socialist programs (like social security, welfare programs, medicare/medicaid, various food and housing assistance programs, public funding of education, public transportation, public safety, libraries, the postal service, etc.). However, the overall effectiveness and scope of these programs still starkly contrasts with the more robust social safety nets that we see in other countries (in particular, the Nordic model is a good example to compare against).
To borrow Vsotvep’s words, the basic idea behind socialism is the concept of
carrying the burden of poverty with the whole society. That is, rich citizens pay a larger part of their income to taxes than poor citizens, who sometimes do not even have to pay taxes, which goes to social plans to fund those poor citizens (in the form of welfare support, free education, free healthcare, etc.).
However, an unfortunate aspect of American political discourse is the conflation of the words “socialism” and “communism”, and the strong association of such terms with various historical examples of brutal authoritarian regimes. Such views are horrifically exploited to oppose things like universal healthcare, affordable access to quality/higher education, addressing poverty, and reducing inequalities in wealth and opportunity. The typical response from the conservative quarter is to scream “Socialism! Communism!” in order to label such concepts as evil. However, the real evil is the greed that prevents us from addressing the problems that we face with healthcare, education, poverty, and inequality.
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I forgot to say I second that.
Learn from our mistakes, people.
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I’ve a question (or a miserere?—a word I learned today) about searching the forum archive. I’m looking for threads in teaching but not in any of the subcategories.
When I pick “Teaching × 374”, I also get threads in subcategories even though the number “374” suggests otherwise. Am I missing something?
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In your country, how long is it (typically) between election and the new adminstration taking power?
Edit: i suppose i should have given some context. I am used to the UK system where there is an election on a Thursday, the result is known by around 2am that night and the new government is in place the next day. So the gap between US presidential election (and presumably Congress too but i don’t know) and inauguration is amazing to me.
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Thirty days (but I had to google it to make sure and not make a joke of myself).
We have a President, elected every 5 years from the Parliament, nominally the highest seat, but Prime Minister (Parliament elections every 4 years) is the actual leader. We must have elections within 30 days counting from when standing Parliament 4-year period ends (usually something happens and the whole 4 years don’t run).
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30 days for them to take power and 600 days for them to actually realise that they are in power and they have to stop saying “the previous government left us with nothing, we found scorched earth” and all those childish excuses
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I’m from Germany and to be on the safe side, I looked everything up on Wikipedia. 
The Bundestag is elected for four years, and new elections must be held between 46 and 48 months after the beginning of its electoral term, unless the Bundestag is dissolved prematurely. Its term ends when the next Bundestag convenes, which must occur within 30 days of the election.
Elections are always on a Sunday. I mean, seriously, which country would choose a work day to hold an election?! 
After the Bundestag was elected, the negotiations to form the government start - sometimes, there are several possibilities which parties might form the cabinet together (it basically never happens that one party has enough votes to govern alone).
Depending on how difficult these negotiations are, this can take a while. Here’s a diagramm for how many days this took in the past:
The Chancellor is elected by the federal parliament (Bundestag) on proposal of the President of Germany with a majority of all members of the Bundestag (Chancellor-majority). However, the Bundestag is free to disregard the President’s proposal (which has, as of 2019, never happened)
Even though the chancellor is not elected directly by the people, it is of course clear long before the Bundestag election who is running, so voters choose a party and choose a chancellor candidate along with it.
Following their election in the Bundestag, the Chancellor-elect will visit Bellevue Palace, the residence of the President, to receive a certificate of appointment. This is the moment, the elected individual actually enters office. After this short appointment-ceremony, the Chancellor returns to the Bundestag, in order to take the oath of office. Having taken the oath, the Chancellor will once again visit Bellevue Palace, this time joined by the individuals, whom the Chancellor intends to propose as members of the cabinet. The President will officially appoint the new cabinet members, again handing over certificates of appointment. After the ministers are appointed, they return to the Bundestag and take their oaths of office, completing the appointment-process.
The president, however, has a mainly representative function and is elected for 5 years at the Federal Convention.
And if you find the German political system too complicated, ask yourself if there might be a good reason to have a well-balanced system where one person can’t hold too much power. 
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Question: So, the Chancellor isn’t automatically the leader of the winning party? I didn’t know that, this is interesting.
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Not automatically, but usually (and so far) yes.
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This brought a discussion with my sister about our Prime Ministers, which landed me on this page
We’ve had 99 Prime Ministers in roughly 200 years. 
(individuals, not appointments)
And the succession is a roller-coaster.
Also, today I learned that at one point we had an Archbishop as Viceroy, who then became Prime Minister as well.
I wasn’t prepared.
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