[Texas Flames Fan]

Originally Posted by Thor

I spent 20yrs in Canada, my father was a hard working electrician, a small business owner who immigrated to Canada for a better life for his kids. The fact is that outside of the USA, every modern 1st world country is at this point single payer, with a small amount of private care mixed in. This is the most successful of a difficult system that no one has perfected as of yet.

I'm a member of the conservative party in Iceland, was a PC in Alberta for most of my youth, and consider myself a rational person when it comes to spending and ultimately how that money is used and benefits society.

This suggestion, and idea that has been implanted in the US for the last 50 years is that any helping hand to people in need is worse than if we let them just fail or fade away, because how else could they learn to take care of themselves.

Rightly or wrongly, the Nordic nations are touted as the best capitalist mix with socialist policies, with their very strong social safety net. Yet if you know anyone who lives out here or look at the numbers, our unemployment is some of the lowest in the world. We are hard working, we gladly pay in to a system that helps those who are in need, knowing that they will and society will be better off if they are propped up and not left behind.

The USA has seen devastating levels of the middle class being reduced and the smallest percentage of people in the US gaining almost all the gains in the last 30 years, so Democrats and Republicans are all in this together. The problem is, as in most nations money has corrupted the will of the people, and this is the biggest fight we all have to undertake.

Agree with most of this.