RaikouLover I think a lot of my friends who fit in the category of moderate democrats would vote for Trump over Sanders. Could you give me some talking points about why Sanders wouldn't be so bad? I really don't want to pay more to social security and programs as such. I think its unfair enough that between state, city, federal, and healthcare taxes that close to 50% of my paycheck goes back to the government.
On my commission checks its above 50%. I'm 23 years old.... it will only get worse.
I'm very much in the camp of I don't know who to support and I often read this thread , but yeah.
I'm probably not the best to answer since I'm not american myself and I don't know much the program of Sanders. I just heard that he wanted to set up the same system than western Europe countries in USA. I'm Belgian so I will explain quickly what it means around healthcare and education.
About Healthcare, it's really inexpensive here. The state covers 70% of your costs (If you go to the doctor and it costs something like 25 euros, you have approximately 20 euros which are given you back). If you buy a private insurance and for about 40/50 euros by months, your healthcare is basically free and at the opposite of some state of US, they cannot hide you if it is expensive (I don't know if it exists in the US but I read that somewhere in the Internet).
Other example with school. I'm in the university, the year costs 800 euros by year. In five years, I will pay 4000 euros for my whole scolarity. On this 800 euros by year, my parents also receive a family allocation to cover a part of this cost (I dont know exactly the fraction, it's something like 15% i guess).
In Belgium (but it is not the case in the other countries of Europe for that), you have also to right to choose any university of the country if you success your last year of high school obviously. It doesn't matter the results you get in this last year.
We definitely pay more taxes but if the number of 50% you give is real, I don't know how America does to pay so much in doing so little for their citizens. It's just crazy to me. Maybe America is poor compared to Europe or there are strong inequalities or your budget for army takes almost every dollar you give to the state but this situation is not normal at all for a civilized country.
When you pay taxes, except corruption, it goes back to you. Taxes allow to pay hospital, schools, roads, etc. Belgium people certainly earn less money than american people but we need less money as well since the big things such as school and hospital is cheap. We are less worried about the future and we can plan things easily.
Maybe this system is not totally possible to build in America but there is definitely room for improvement. It looks maybe like communism for American people but belgian people are happy with that and it's the main purpose. I think nobody should be afraid of socialist policies if it works.