Yeah, in order to make healthcare work on a national level, we’d have to raise top marginal tax rates- perhaps bringing them back to 70's levels, or at least moving them closer to what you see in Northern Europe.

Well, if the Democrats run good candidates, their time is up this November.

All joking aside, there are plenty of dynasties in countries like Canada, Norway, and Taiwan.

There’s no reason why we cannot have booming markets and a strong national healthcare system that brings infant mortality to a statistical zero.

Healthcare and welfare should be seen as completely separate issues.

Right? It would literally be the same as someone hiring Kevin Spacey today and then complaining one year from now that they didn’t know he had been accused of sexual harassment and assault.  

They weren’t unaware of anything. Literally, half the country has been calling Allen a pedophile and a creep since 1992- since Soon Yi.

As you surely know, the only reason Amazon has such an inflated PE is because the company is intentionally putting growth before profit. Smart investors invest based on both the financial health AND the future potential of a company.

I’d go further and say that gay and straight people began using condoms at at a rate which possibly brought down the rate of new cases by 90%, while simultaneously pushing the government to invest heavily in medical research. And, the gay community began pushing a non-government, grassroots message- use condoms- to…

Obviously, there are going to be outliers who fall through the cracks. I’m certainly not expecting a woman who gets raped and has a child because she cannot afford an abortion to bootstrap her way out of being raped and having a child. Horrible things happen in life.

Look, I believe in a strong social safety net. But, we don’t have a government willing to implement this type of safety net. And, we may not get the government we want for many years, if ever.

Fair points. So, until we get a government that will implement all of the policy changes we need-which may take another 40 years- is it unfair to ask people to use birth control and hold off on having children until they are in a committed relationship or otherwise financially stable?

He was raised in the rust belt by Appalachians, lived in a town full of Appalachian immigrants, frequently went back to the hollers of eastern Kentucky to visit his family, all of whom were hill people. He understands the culture about as well as anyone.

Yeah, I thought Vance opened up about his own troubled history in a pretty brave and honest way.

Except, Vance doesn’t really argue either of those points. The peers he criticizes all had access to employment and good education.

“Public policy can help,” Vance writes, “but there is no government that can fix these problems for us … it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better.”

I’m a bit mixed on this. For around the first decade and a half of Amazon- none of the major retailers- Macy’s, Walmart, Sears-  took Bezos or Amazon seriously as either a threat to the status quo or a truly disruptive, game changing company. During the time, rather than attempting to satisfy Wall Street analysts- who…

Oprah certainly wouldn’t be my first choice for President, but I see no reason why she shouldn’t run and debate Harris, Booker, Warren, Gillibrand, etc during the primaries. I have a sense that Harris and Gillibrand would run circles around Oprah during the debates and one of them would wind up victorious.

The wall would never be completed, and the Democrats would save one million Dreamers from deportation.

What the Democrats should do is fund the border wall in exchange for DACA. The border wall is a colossal waste of money that won’t help or hurt anyone either way- perhaps a bit of environmental/animal migration damage that can be reversed four years from now.