Comment by _heimdall
2 months ago
Unless I'm drastically misinformed, the UK is dealing with a mountain of issues including immigration, economic problems, and quality of the healthcare being provided.
2 months ago
Unless I'm drastically misinformed, the UK is dealing with a mountain of issues including immigration, economic problems, and quality of the healthcare being provided.
First of all, are those problems you would say do not exist in the US?
And if that's the case, I'd disagree. But would any of those problems be somehow explained by the differences between the British and American systems? Especially when countries with very different systems (like all of continental Western Europe), and the US, have then too.
Many (all?) of those problems do exist in the US as well. My point, though, was that the US was historically based on ideas that don't align with welfare programs. I only raise the issues in the UK because you were comparing the two and it seemed important to note that though the UK has many welfare programs, it isn't going well for them currently.
Toy original point, the US was based on individual freedoms and rights that simply didn't exist in the monarchical UK system. For much of the US's history the, albeit politically idealized, expectation was that you come here and make your own way. We didn't have a feudal system and didn't depend on a monarch to run many details of our daily life. We have seen more and more of that creep into the American system over the last century or so though, and yes we are coincidentally also running into many of the same issues seen in more socialist European countries today.
> We didn't have a feudal system and didn't depend on a monarch to run many details of our daily life.
Neither were the British by the time the American revolution started.
I don't see much difference in the personal opportunities and rights between post-independence US and industrial Britain. Apart from, you know, the US having slaves with no rights nor opportunities.
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You are mistaken. Socialism (or the streams of thought that would eventually become socialism) have always been a part of American culture. Perhaps most famously Thomas Paine advocated for a universal basic income.
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