American reacts to 'Democratic Socialism Explained'

Thank you for watching me, a humble American, react to Understanding Democratic Socialism

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[Kompromist]

The system in Germany and the biggest part of the EU is called "social market economy". It annoyes us that Americans always call it "socialism".

[mats]

Bernie Sanders would be a centrist in europe..
Some of his points would be centre-right

Hes not even that left in in the international political scale
The stuff he advertises for is a no brainer in most of places

[Dqtube]

5:45 It is also a question of how you define corruption, because in the US many things that we in Europe consider corruption are simply called lobbying. Some countries even ban corporate sponsorship of political parties.

[MasterHigure]

As a Norwegian, we don't call it democratic socialism, we can it social democracy.

[nina]

In Europe, it's mostly called "social democracy" (in Austria and in Germany large influential left-wing parties are called "Social Democratic Party"), but no one calls it "democratic socialism". A social democracy operates under capitalist economic rules with strong guarantees for private property rights. The state has some ownership stakes in relevant large companies (e.g. large energy companies). The state also guarantees strong social safety nets such as social health insurance and social retirement insurance and social assistance for the working poor.

[Silverwolvie]

As European I don't follow USA politics closely... but every 4 years I wait in horror what idiot comes to power....

[dutchroll]

I lived in the USA for a year and got really, really tired of being told I live in a "communist" or "socialist" country, Australia, simply because we have a universal healthcare system and gun control like almost every other civilised western nation. Calling us communist or socialist is quite laughable (the first 50 times at least). It's quite sad how distorted the American view has become.

[chrismeyer]

Re: how Bernie Sanders would be seen in Europe: Even the US Democrats would be seen as right of center conservatives here, leaving him still short from being considered left.

[Nonov_Yurbisniss]

9:28 - Just so we're all clear, the video got 1/5 of the flags right: For Norway, they put the flag of Denmark, Finland is correct, for Denmark, they put the flag of Norway, for Sweden, they put the flag of Iceland, and for Iceland, they put the flag of Sweden 😂

[Braun]

Was once lectured by a yank in the airport that "this country is a socialist failed state". This after I told him that he and his daughters could spend thee day of layover leaving the airport and taking some time near the lake, this was in the morning and their flight would be leaving in the evening.
The reason not to do this was " we don't want to be pestered by the hordes of beggars that inhabit your failed cities".
This was Kloten airport, Zurich, Switzerland.

[irminschembri]

For me as a teacher of politics and economics in Germany Social Democracy is a combination of Free Market Rules aka capitalism with a Social " Net " aka " socialism " or capitalism with a social touch . The government doesn't interfere in the rules of the free market but makes sure that neccessities like clean water, education, health care etc are available for its population and most importantly that the rights of workers and vulnerable people are protected.
How can you be productive or live a decent life if you have to constantly fear unemployment aka "hire and fire ", eviction from your home or becoming bankrupt bc of a medical bill ???

[diarmuidkuhle]

The US doesn't have a political left and a right. They have a centre right and an extreme right.

[martijnkeisers]

I feel sorry for the enormous amount of working poor in the USA, living in their cars or being bankrupt cause of medical bills..

[juliadolker]

We often understand communisim - socialism - democratic socialism, social democracy as a spectrum but it doesn't always add up. The french "left-wing" party calls itself socialist, the German Social Democratic, but the French one is no less democratic. Lenin's party was called "social democratic" but we, today wouldn't understand them as democratic. The SPD has long been the "social democratic party", but until not too long ago their party manifesto stated that they are the "party of democratic socialism" and that the aim of democratic socialism was to achive and conserve freedom, equality and solidarity (while at the same time there was another Party of Democratic Socialism = PDS). In soviet jargon, the transitional period, when revolution has removed the capitalist system, but couter revolution is still active and people haven't adapted to communism yet - was called socialism.
At the same time, a lot of "socialist policies" mentioned in the video, were introduced by a conservative government, who wanted to a) implement Christian values into politics, b) make captitalism work even better.
Socialism (or any other ideology) is more of a philosphy. We all want freedom, democracy, prosperity, but it depends how these things are defined and also how humans capabilities to exercise those freedoms, ect. are understood.
Take democracy for example. We generally think democracy means that the constitution is designed in such a way that everyone has the same formal oportunities to participate in politics through competitive elections. From a socialist perspective one could argue, as long as there is poverty, not everyone has the same oportunites, because when your main concern is how to feed your family, you won't have the spare time to get involved in politics (And that is even before considering the resources needed for an election campaign). From this perspective, re-distributing wealth is the first step towards democracy. Can this be done within the capitalist system, even though the poor are structurally disadvantated in democratical representation? European democratic socialists believe yes, but more hardline communists would argue that the whole system is designed in such a way that the poor will never truely be in a position to participate in politics, not least because the rich controll the media and brainwash the electorate and the only way to realise democracy is to seize controll by revolution and turn around the power pyramid. Communists, too think that they are democrats, the idea of marxism is that people will be so free as they had never been before, they won't even need state organs, because when everyone lives equal, they will naturally do the right things for the community, but not until the conditioning towards greed, competition and exploitation is still within the people, so a transitional period of "dictatorship of the proletariat" is neccessary to recondition people to see how much better socialism is....Today, most understand that this way of thinking is to positivistic and does not really work. But then "capitalist democracy" doesn't work as intended, neither. In the USA, candidates at every level have to invest their private wealth, you can't even become a city councilor if you are not rich. How are they going to introduce policies that benefit the majority? Then, whoever won this battle of material within his own party can run for presidency, but a presidential election costs 1 billion dollar and the only way to mass this money is through cooperate funding, but the co-operates want something in return for it, so the cycle of policy for the richt will never end. Then people have the choice between two candidates (in an election system where all votes that don't go towards the strongest candidate are discarded) who are both committed to capitalist co-operations. They don't really represent anyone except maybe the top 0.1% but to make the impression that they are the "people's candiate", they have to put on a big act on every television channel for over a year, which makes the campaign even more expensive and exclusive.

[SirKlauth]

From my perspective as a european, Bernie has always seemed like one of your most... normal and reasonnable politicians.

[marcelgijsbers]

"Wouldn't Free college just be straight up socialism?" 😂 No, in the Netherlands we call that a sound investment. Because the return (lifetime taxes over a higher income) is much greater then the cost... Yeah, even free college is capitalism 😳

[hommedterre]

What a lot of Americans don`t seem to realize is that the term "Socialism (by which largely social democracy is actually meant) is gladly and carelessly used by their politicians to scare the average citizen who, not having been taught what it exactly is, to pander to the whims and wants of mostly corporate America to keep the unequal distribution of wealth in the US and promote their own greedy motives and to which a lot of politicians gladly collude either to promote their own self (mostly economic) interests or out of plain ignorance. Hats off to you Ryan for valiantly on educating yourself on what is (by US political standards) there considered as a "delicate" issue.

[fredrichenning]

I left the USA over 50 years ago when I figured out the democratic socialism is WAY ahead of the US brand of "partial-democratic capitalism".

[philip]

Australia can be considered democratic socialist, and I’m damn glad, Americans hear socialist and lose their minds, if they understood what it is they would be a much happier country

[carolinesch.]

Yall americans just use socialism way wrong and not even know what it means😂