SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the you-can-go-your-own-way-♩♫♩♫ dept.
Supporters of a plan for California to secede from the union took their first formal step Monday morning, submitting a proposed ballot measure to the state attorney general's office in the hopes of a statewide vote as soon as 2018.
Marcus Ruiz Evans, the vice president and co-founder of Yes California, said his group had been planning to wait for a later election, but the presidential election of Donald Trump sped up the timeline.
"We're doing it now because of all of the overwhelming attention," Evans said.
The Yes California group has been around for more than two years, Evans said. It is based around California taxpayers paying more money to the federal government than the state receives in spending, that Californians are culturally different from the rest of the country, and that national media and organizations routinely criticize Californians for being out of step with the rest of the U.S.
Could California go it alone?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @09:13PM
"Silly socialist utopia" hmmm, you really don't know much beyond what you hear on Fox news huh?
Quick clue for you: we are already in a dystopian socialist nightmare where we pay for the safety nets but the scared conservative types ruin every implementation so they hardly do much real good. The only thing I would change is to fully socialize healthcare and education, and in the past we pretty much had education already set. Then the profiteers came in saying how they would make everything better and more efficient, turns out they just jacked up prices and have saddled entire generations with unsustainable debt. Yay free market is best /s
Multiple other countries have implemented these changes while maintaining individual economic freedom. The successful versions are a blend of pure free market capitalism and social safety nets. Instead of realizing this, most anti-socialist people come up with reasons why it wouldn't work in the US or how terrible it is to have the government take a huge chunk of your paycheck. Nevermind that the successful socialist countries have statistically better indexes across the board for education, health, and happiness.
"We must stand strong against the Reds!"
Kool-aid, it refreshes your thirst while washing your brain!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 24 2016, @11:33AM
Um, bullshit.
Especially since all of your "utopia" efforts need not be done at the state level, but can be proven by your rich cities. Or are you telling me the conservative stronghold in San Francisco is why the streets smell of urine?
Other countries have had to claw themselves out of disastrous welfare policies (re: Sweden from the 70s), and at least most understand any welfare program is essential a deal with the devil. You have to be mindful of costs so they don't ultimately destroy your economy.
However, from the 1970s and onwards Sweden's GDP growth fell behind other industrialised countries and the country's per capita ranking fell from 4th to 14th place in a few decades.[172] From the mid-1990s until today Sweden's economic growth has once again accelerated and has been higher than in most other industrialised countries (including the US) during the last 15 years.[173] A report from the United Nations Development Program predicted that Sweden's rating on the Human Development Index will fall from 0.949 in 2010 to 0.906 in 2030.[174]
Sweden began slowing the expansion of the welfare state in the 1980s, and even trimming it back, and according to the OECD and McKinsey, Sweden has recently been relatively quick to adopt economic liberalisation policies, such as deregulation, compared to countries such as France.[144][175] The current Swedish government is continuing the trend of moderate rollbacks of previous social reforms.[144][176] Growth has been higher than in many other EU-15 countries. Also since the mid-1980s, Sweden has had the fastest growth in inequality of any developed nation, according to the OECD. This has largely been attributed to the reduction in state benefits and a shift toward the privatisation of public services.
Keep your cancer to yourself.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 24 2016, @03:32PM
but the scared conservative types ruin every implementation
Can't have a successful Big Brother without an Emmanuel Goldstein scapegoat.
Nevermind that the successful socialist countries have statistically better indexes across the board for education, health, and happiness.
And the unsuccessful ones don't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 24 2016, @11:03PM
Name one.
...and if you name a Oligarchical Liberal Democracy with elements of State Capitalism and without Democracy in the Workplace, I will point out that your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 25 2016, @03:10AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 25 2016, @10:27PM
You are still are omitting the quotation marks around words that are clearly-established bullshit.
No country has ever come anywhere close to the meaning of that word as defined by Marx.
Though they -claim- to be following Marx's works, the "Commies" shit all over his idea and set up Totalitarian governments.
The Mensheviks, who had the better, more worker-centric plan, were quashed in the early days of Leninism.
In 1921, even before Lenin was dead, the Bolsheviks had set up a board of directors [google.com] that wasn't answerable to The Workers.
Their State Capitalism was very much like other examples of Capitalism.
lack of democracy in the workplace
...is called Capitalism.
is just another variant of socialism
Your deep ignorance of economic systems is on display yet again.
You are describing OLIGARCHY, which is a GOVERNMENTAL system.
...and, as already mentioned, Capitalist exploitation of The Workers.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 26 2016, @12:44AM
Their State Capitalism was very much like other examples of Capitalism.
It's not even close. Like claiming fake diamonds are diamonds.