We shall have to agree to disagree then. Calling a healthcare system that doesn’t cover all available healthcare universal just doesn’t make sense.

I can accept that’s what people call it, but that’s about it.

I think they’re wrong.

By this logic the USA has universal healthcare, because a hospital must treat you for emergency, life-saving care, even if you’re unable to pay.

So, the definition is absurd if it’s just that a system covers everyone.

TIL then I guess. If I imagine someone saying this in a US accent, I just can’t picture it haha

Universal healthcare means it covers all healthcare. If you’re needing pay pay out of pocket to private providers, and it doesn’t even cover a bunch of things, I refuse to call that universal - and so should you.

Universal means nothing, otherwise.

Medicare defenders really need to dream bigger, damn.

telcos

Are we Australians rubbing off on the international English lexicon? I don’t know how to feel about this haha

Yes, but the first one is not true.

Tired of calling what countries like Australia and Germany have as “universal healthcare”.

It isn’t. Simply isn’t.

In the case of Australia most familiar with. It’s a weird mix of public and private, with most medical costs covered under a private subsidy model, where your health service can change whatever, and you have to pay the gap between the Medicare rebate and what the services charges.

Doesn’t cover dental, has a small rebate for physio and other allied health (again, private providers, public rebate) and covers a basic check up for eyes every 3 years only, but doesn’t cover most optical.

The hospital system is also an absolute mess of a two-tiered system I won’t get into here.

It’s not fucking universal and I’m sick of people pretending like it is. It’s just kilometres better than the USA, which is the lowest bar ever.

USA definitely is a shithole, but it’s not racist to criticise a government… (Pretty obviously implied)

From what I can tell Mamdani has been speaking our against these events. So he’s spoken about Gaza at least once since election… Though I am neither from NYC nor the US, so don’t know in great detail.

Again, Mamdani isn’t a socialist, and isn’t gonna bring about any sort of meaningful restructure of US society. But it seems like a stretch to say he’s actively supporting US imperialism given the scope of his power.

Lesser evilism only really applies when no other choice exists. In the US voting system, you must vote for the lesser evil, because first past the post is trash. The part that people haven’t been doing at large scale is still continuing to bring about change outside the terrible voting system, 1. at a minimum to fix the voting system and 2. to build workers movements that use things like, unionism, general strikes, protests, boycotts and eventually revolution to overthrow the ruling class by (mostly) peaceful means by numbers (and probably some violence when there’s inevitably a retaliation by the ruling class).

But not voting in the US and feeling high and mighty about it is really stupid.

Luckily, in Australia, we can at least preference, meaning we don’t need to deal with that particular hurdle. Though it’s still not democratic as representatives are unrecallable, and like all capitalist counties, the real power is with the capitalist class who put their finger on the scale to get their desired outcomes.

Lesser evilism in the context of world governments is absurd (i.e. supporting Russia, China, Iran, etc just because they’re not the USA), especially socialists who believe in international worker solidarity.

We get absolutely nothing but supporting totalitarian regimes, be they in the US, Russia, China etc. We ought to be supporting workers in all countries to achieve socialism, not bloody the ones in power just because their ruling class are enemies of the US ruling class… (and for the record, China, Russia and Vietnam are all capitalist countries… one needs to delude themselves to believe otherwise).

In conclusion, it’s weird that you don’t mind being called a tankie, because it hints are your disregard for democracy and self-determination.

And by definition you can’t really call yourself a socialist if you don’t believe in democracy, since how else can a society be “worker controlled” if the workers don’t get a say over society…

Indeed, hence the second half of my comment :)

Oh I don’t disagree. Just pointing out that 1. Socialism isn’t a dirty world like the meme above implies and 2. That Mamdani calls himself a democratic socialist

He’s not very socialist, no. But based on your take that socialists on the west are imperialist simply for existing within an imperialist nation, something tells me you think anyone who’s the enemy of the USA must be great. (Do correct me). And that usually ends up being tankies.

He’s been outspoken on the genocide in Gaza, at least. Which is one of the USA’s proxy imperialist projects.

USA, Russia, China, they’re all terrible in their own way. We don’t get to choose where we’re born.

I’m a socialist (edit: not a “democratic socialist”, like actually a socialist who wants revolution and institution of a worker controlled society) in Australia. Am I okay with imperialism too because of Australia’s actions?

In conclusion, Mamdani isn’t gonna bring about socialism, but he’s certainly not as bad as you’re describing (that I can tell, so far).

Isn’t he self-described as a “democratic socialist”? (I mean, his faction aren’t super radical socialist as far as I’m aware, in terms of trying to bring about a workers democracy. The NYC “city run” grocery stores are just contacted out, not actually city run. But hey, it’s way, way, way better than what other US political factions are doing)

End capitalism. It’s no coincidence all these countries are pushing this in lockstep.

End goal is the death of online freedom.

Get angry, get involved in your local politics to bring democracy to the workplace and the economy.

It’s not gonna get better otherwise.

If they try to retire classic outlook I’m gonna riot.

Windows 11 is bad and I was unhappy when I got moved onto it, but is bearable. New outlook is unusable if you get a large number of emails every day for work.

They decided: let’s rebuild it with none of the features!!

It’s funny because in Australia it’s even non-religious (well the churches I’ve heard of).

That’s how based the UU is.

All be welcome, yo.

Seek the truth and serve humanity.

Not sure how stalinists can plausibly claim to be socialists.

You can’t have worker control without democracy, and the USSR certainly did not have democracy.

It had a new ruling class, based on party position rather than money.

That’s not socialism - socialism requires democracy by definition.

Stalinists and Maoists who claim otherwise are idiots.

You have to do something about it yourselves. Your military is way too big and you have nukes.

You, dear commenter, need to organise and fix your broken country. Only the common people can fix this.

Have they heard of tax?

I think this deserves a chuckle at most. I visited Sydney with 2 other people, and the train was literally going within 250 metres of the hotel we booked.

Didn’t take the train because a cab worked out cheaper, absolutely ridiculous.

Public-private partnerships, not even once…

That’s what I was thinking. In what country can a foreign country sue you in your own country?

And this is a very stupid state of affairs, in my opinion.

Fuck the crown, and the former Governor General John Kerr specifically