John Howard is my new hero.

[Fuxsiloh]

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

Happy reading. Note 3 - reduce government regulation.

I don't want to reinvent the wheel so I will borrow Dzhay's words and state that deregulation = corporate fuckery.

Government regulations keep corporations in check. A government, through the people, decides what is in the best interests of the COUNTRY, not the corporation, and enacts policies (hopefully) that serve the bests interests of the country. If there is NO GOVERNMENT REGULATION, a corporation can do whatever the fuck it wants to turn a steady profit... welcome to outsourcing. Why would a corporation pay an Excarkun $10 an hour when it could pay Chinese-Excarkun 25cents an hour? It isn't that complicated, I promise.

Reagan promoted little government and led a wave of deregulation - this was the period when he bent your country over. I am also not going to defend the continued penetration from successive governments - Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama. My point is that Reagan started it all. When Communism died in the late 80s early 90s, Reagan, neoliberalism (which is effectively the same as Reaganomics) had won, the world was now blessed with unchecked capitalism. All your problems and decayed economy can be attributed to the path Reagan led you down in the 80s. Defend it all you like, try and blame the successors, but it all comes down to him. Suck it up and move on.

I won't go into a discussion about how labeling things 'left' or 'right' is problematic, suffice to say that there is no real left or right anymore. Try not to see it as a scale, with 1 extreme (being communism) and the other (being fascism), see it more as a circle, both extremes end up being the same really. You call them liberals/conservatives but in reality, they each have left and right positions on a range of things which I won't go into.

I have private health insurance - not because the private system is better - but because if I don't, I have to pay a 2% increase to my Medicare levy for every year after 31 that I don't have it. The setup is to encourage those that can afford it to pay for it. It is a good system and it works, in contrast to your system which isn't good and doesn't work. Basic healthcare for your citizens (all of them) is really something any advanced nation should have. I think you fail miserably in this respect.

But you know what Excarkun, I might take Dzhay's advice and leave this alone. If you fail to grasp basic political ideologies and how they have evolved throughout history you are never going to have a complete understanding of modern politics.

I have to give you credit for trying though, lots of people don't even give a fuck and apathy fucks us all.