Randi Rhodes Forums

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-2 ... oblem.html

In his thoughtful article, “Social Model is Europe’s Solution, Not Its Problem,” French labor-union leader Paul Fourier assails “austerity”, arguing that “the malfunctions that caused” Europe’s financial crisis aren’t being addressed and, “Instead, they are forcing ordinary people to pay and attacking the social systems that support them.” Related issues were also discussed here on Tuesday.

On the above Note: Sarkozy is Out - http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/04/24/ ... l-24-2012/

Could it be that the people of Europe are onto the demon that’s been placed in their midst and will excise it? Signs are definitely pointing in that direction, including the recent victory of the Socialist candidate Hollande over Sarkozy in France. And there’s more.

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Europe Gets It's Spine Back I See.

Ah, looks like FDL needs a factcheck desk.

Runoff is Saturday

The phrasing holds up. The runoff follows the election just held in which Hollande not only captured a larger single percentage of the vote than any other candidate, but also became the first challenger to take more votes than an incumbent president in I think it was more than 30 years, legitimate victories.

But believe it or not Hollande as the Socialist candidate actually placed as the center leftist in the race. To his left was the Communist-tied Melanchon who was the most aggressively anti-austerity in the race who garnered 11% of the vote. To the right of Sarkozy was Marine le Pen who could be thought of as a female, French, future Rand Paul running under her father's ultra-right party and taking 18% of that vote. It is expected that Hollande Sarkozy will compete for that libertarian leaning voting bloc while those such as the subject in your article make the case that the Melanchon voters represent as kind of the French counterpart to our Greens and Progressives(party) vying for attention.

Oops! I misunderstood. I thought the factcheck comment was a rebut of the underlined, disputing Hollande's victory.

All social models have do deal with the issue of aging populations and low birth rates. This makes taxing and paying for generous social benefits difficult. I hope some European socialist country can figure out the solution.

Seems like some countries have it figured out, o denizen of the deep...

http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/14/world- ... table.html

World's Happiest Countries

1. Denmark
2. Finland
3. Norway
4. Sweden
5. Netherlands

Notice why the U.S. comes so low on this table?

40% report they are "struggling" in the U.S.

Only 17% report that in Denmark.

Happiness is very sustainable. As a social model, it works. We may never have utopia on Earth, but I would say with a strong, thriving social democracy, the Scandinavian countries are the closest we've come so far.

Will Americans go for the 50% tax rate these countries place on their citizens?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Denmark

The lowest tax bracket in Denmark is 25%.

You'll notice in this chart, Denmark is in the middle, not at the bottom (highest mean rate).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... _tax_rates

Only upper income people in Denmark pay 51.5% - if that horrifies you, I should show you some Eisenhower era U.S. tax tables some time, where the top rate was 90%.

Well if you can figure out a way to get Americans to raise their tax rates..........

Yes, it's called an act of Congress.

Not this Congress.

why not, use to be 90%

Austerity Pushes The UK Back Into Recession — Will American Conservatives Learn The Lesson?

By Pat Garofalo on Apr 25, 2012 at 9:35 am

The United Kingdom is officially back in a recession, after seeing growth drop 0.2 percent in the first quarter of this year. But neither Prime Minister David Cameron nor Chancellor George Osborne are backing down from their Conservative government’s adoption of austerity measures. [MORONS]

“The solution to a debt crisis cannot be more debt,” Cameron said, after calling the latest growth numbers “very, very disappointing.” Cameron even bragged about his nation’s low interest rate on its debt. Osborne, meanwhile, said in a statement that “the one thing that would make the situation even worse would be to abandon our credible plan and deliberately add more borrowing and even more debt.”

Osborne predicted back in November that Britain would not experience a double dip recession. But with the implementation of his austerity plan, the UK is not only experiencing a worse recovery than the one following the Great Depression, but is doing worse than the rest of the Eurozone (despite the fact that the UK doesn’t face the monetary policy restrictions that the Euro nations face): ...

3 Charts at the Link: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/0 ... recession/

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Republicans Hate Giving Anything To The Betterment of People In General

Simply they're takers !!!

Yeah, Cameron was pretty bold on the House floor about the austerity rhetoric. It will be interesting to see if this gets away from him. He is head of a coalition that might not buy the austerity line for much longer it would seem.

Oh, the lesson wont be learned, but if you tell a bagger that many low income and middle income Black americans and Latino americans and Gay americans and Muslim americans and Jewish americans and Native American americans and Asian americans and Native Hawaiian americans, will be harmed by doing something, they will rush to do it and with glee and will keep doing it until the country is decimated...

take to bank