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by _heimdall 39 days ago
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.
2 comments
sofixa 38 days ago
> 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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_heimdall 38 days ago
The British absolutely was a monarchy during the American revolution.

The British don't have a right freedom of speech, for example. They gave been arresting and charging people for social media posts.

We're getting way off on a tangent here though. The original point you were commenting on was that welfare programs, including those the US already has, don't fit in the model the US was original founded on and operated under for a majority of the time the country has existed.

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harimau777 38 days ago
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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_heimdall 38 days ago
Thomas Paine's writing, especially Common Wealth, inspired many of the revolutionaries but he had no direct role in the country and we never implemented his UBI. Its also worth noting that his writings themselves were fiction, he invented a past to paint a picture of how he wanted the future to look.

What socialist type programs can you point to in the US, say before the New Deal?

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