[cactus2093]

I mostly agree with what you're saying, but disagree about Bernie. Many of his biggest policies are still just trying to cover the rot with a coat of paint. Healthcare too expensive? Just have the government cover the bill. College too expensive? Same thing. Workers not paid enough? Raise the minimum wage. All very blunt, simplistic reactions, that ignore the complexities of the real world. Getting rid of the rot requires looking at the roots of the problems. If something is 10x more expensive today than it was a few decades ago, just agreeing to pay the 10x price is not a good solution. You need to figure out and address the underlying causes.

I am still hopeful for our future, maybe foolishly, but I am. If there is a silver lining of Covid-19, maybe it will highlight some of the insane bureaucracy and regulatory capture that are strangling our institutions in the US and lead to improvements. Don't get me wrong, we also need some progressive policies targeted at helping those who are struggling most, but those policies will only be effective if we also recognize and address the underlying cost disease issues. Just look at progressive havens like San Francisco to see how much money can be burned on well-intentioned ideas without achieving any results, if you refuse to acknowledge the underlying causes.

[coldpie]

> If something is 10x more expensive today than it was a few decades ago, just agreeing to pay the 10x price is not a good solution.

That's not what those proposals were. Single payer healthcare and state-provided education is how you fix those problems.

[VRay]

IMO, 4 year university degrees in the USA in their current state are basically a scam

We're promising kids that if they study hard in school they'll be elevated to the middle/upper class by their degree, but in reality most of those degrees are almost completely worthless for building a career.

People are graduating with 4 year degrees in business, math, assorted liberal arts, and then they're saddled with 6 figures of debt and not any more appealing to companies than someone with a year of experience in a desk job

Another problem: So many people are getting pushed into getting 4 year degrees now that they're now a requirement for many jobs that don't even need them. Sure, a CS degree will help if you're building some Google-scale backend code, but you really don't need one to tinker with a small web storefront's layout bugs

[0134340]

Bernie isn't trying to solve a problem, more correct it. Why fault the people for trying to correct a problem that's more to their advantage when hospitals, to this day, still haven't tried to correct the problem of expenses. One shouldn't have to forego their home to pay for small surgical procedures. When people try to correct these things we get replies like yours saying you shouldn't correct them but leave them to the system to correct them. We have to realize the "system" won't inherently do these things, we the people as part of the system have to take measures to look out for ourselves also because the system won't do it for us.

[_bxg1]

I would agree with you if there weren't so many case studies of other countries solving those problems with those exact, "blunt"-seeming solutions.

[mempko]

Are you familiar with Bernie's plans of

a) giving 20% of ownership of large corporations and 40% of board seats to workers?

b) breaking up the big banks and helping community banks.

These are insanely good ideas and aren't simplistic. Unfortunately, many, including you, only scratched the surface of what Bernie was about.