If you haven't had the privilege (or like, for me, work assignment), to travel all around the country, it's hard to conceptualize how large it is, it's huge. 330,000,000 million diverse people across 3.8 million square miles of changing landscape. I've said before, we might be ungovernable as a whole. In terms of Democracy, that might mean changing how we think about the role of federal government and looking more to the state and local level. We have survived as a species through community.
I was listening to Heather Cox Richardson on Jon Stewart's The Weekly Show podcast, and it made a lot of sense to me. Americans pay a TON of money into the federal government, and see very little personal benefit. Only recently have we seen the infrastructure starting to improve. It seems like if the you paid more money to your local and state governments, there would be more personal accountability to your elected officials, who you have more access to.
Does this make me a Republican now?
@misslovelymess i listened to that podcast & figured it was an understanding problem.
defense spending, roads & infrastructure, farm subsidies, oil & gas subsidies, social security, medicaid, veterans' services, FEMA, education including pell grants & student load guarantees, etc. all come from the feds.
every day peeps don't see that federal $? their kids don't use that education $, peeps don't use federal roads, don't us ss or medicaid & aca? don't want help for those in disasters?
@misslovelymess when peeps say more should go to the states or cities b/c they would be more responsible to their constituents, i respond w/ looking at the worst states, the poorest ones. they benefit greatly from fed programs b/c those are the programs directly feeding peeps. keeping them housed in some cases.
b/c states can & do suck ass. decade after decade.
the strength of a union is to pool money & redistribute it more equitably.
i know. i know. socialism. & yet everyone benefits.
@singlemaltgirl Well the US has showed you (and me) time and time again, they are not willing to do that.
Canada might be able to continue to go in that direction. We can't pull it off.
@misslovelymess fair. but you're biggest spending is defense. so you're willing to let that go?
b/c i don't think your fellow americans are willing to let that go.
once your feds cut education, aca/ss/medicaid, then make the case to return your tax dollars to the state level. i doubt your repubs in the house or senate will support that (your more direct representation) but that's the advocacy needed.
@singlemaltgirl Not your problem, I suppose.
@misslovelymess it becomes our problem when 🇺🇸 fails. when you have a great depression, so do we. when you have a banking crisis, we suffer too. you are our largest trading partner.
the world also suffers when 🇺🇸 does. we know so much about your economy b/c it has such a vast impact on ours.
how much does the avg american know about the cdn economy? not much i would guess.
what we may not understand very well is the thinking of the american people. that does confound us.
@singlemaltgirl @misslovelymess What’s so confounding?
America is racist, sexist, bigoted, angry, and stupid.
What more is there to say?
@singlemaltgirl @mikeharmanos @misslovelymess We have gone back 100 years... we're repeating the same mistakes of 100 years ago, but with people saying "we know what we're doing" when they clearly do not.
I mean, they know what they're wanting to do, but they lack the capacity to think of the rammifications beyond their desires to "have control."
This is not going to be pretty for anyone for the coming years...
@mikeharmanos that part we know. but lots of countries are racist, bigoted, & angry, stupid. look at the uk. look at canada. & yet we both have universal health care. we still tend to go for a collective response rather than an individual one. we have gun control. we really don't get that one about the us.
there are things that are specific to the american way of thinking that we really don't get. but we're finding that how the us thinks is definitely infecting us.
@misslovelymess