From my perspective, there's no one answer, but I've noticed a handful of things:

* Race - Most democratic socialist countries tend to have more homogeneous populations. The U.S. has sizable African-American and Latino-American minorities, often segregated into their own neighborhoods, and that often informs how the white majority votes -- i.e. things like welfare and prison reform are viewed as handouts to people not like themselves. You might say it's comparable to how perceptions of Greek laziness inform German attitudes towards debt cancellation.

* Geography - The U.S.'s political system grants a disproportionate power to sparsely populated states (e.g. a state like Wyoming has more electoral votes per person than California, and states like Iowa and New Hampshire have a large say in how the presidential primaries turn out). This matters with respect to policies that might be considered urban-centric -- e.g. public transportation.

* Militarism - The U.S. is the only country that regularly projects force halfway around the globe, and it's super expensive. Every dollar spent on bombs is a dollar not spent on healthcare. It's a good question as to why American voters constantly favor military might, but it's not necessarily an irrational choice. Or rather, you could argue that it wasn't an irrational choice during WW2 and the Cold War, but that the development of a military-industrial complex has had lasting effects on American politics.

The US spends more on healthcare -- measured in total, and per capita, and as share of GDP -- than any other OECD country, even though it and Mexico are the only OECD countries without universal healthcare. It spends more out of public funds on healthcare (again, by all three measures) than many OECD countries providing universal healthcare spend in total, while also spending more in private spending on healthcare than it does in public spending.

While the US spending about as much (a while ago it was a little more, right now I think its a hair less) as the rest of the world combined in military spending may be argued to limit resources for other activities, it is manifestly not meaningfully constraining health care spending.

The second is a misunderstanding of the concept of a republic. Each state has a say. That's not unfair. It certainly wouldn't promote stability for heavily populated cities to have complete control and entire states neglected.

Not sure I completely disagree on military spending. Like most things, it's a balance. We probably needed a rebalance (was done in the gov shutdown deal). However, I'm not sure it needs further cuts. Maybe just better focus.

Healthcare is a joke. What was passed, and the way it was passed, was deceitful. Turns out it was snake oil. Made some things better, made more things worse, and didn't fix the problem (cost of healthcare).

From a politics perspective, it sure would be nice to have a leader that brings people together. This administration is far to willing to leverage our political differences as a tool for political gain. That has made us culturally worse by creating an environment of distrust, disregard, and division Among our citizens just for having different ideas.

Also remember you are seeing a media/attention filter on everything. Nobody reports or passes on the mundane things. Instead controversies have to be found that outrage some people, all the better to get eyeballs on the TV/site and go viral on Facebook.

I do recommend following Scott Adams' blog (creator of Dilbert). He has an mba, is a trained hypnotist, and various other skills unrelated to comics. He has been writing about the various techniques Donald Trump is using, and why they are so successful. (Note not endorsing Trump, but rather observing.) http://blog.dilbert.com/

Essentially you have to pay, and be a "share-holder" in everything. You should be on top of things everywhere, etc. etc.

And someone recently posted this on his fb page: "If a businessman makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences. If a bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences." - Ayn Rand.

In essence the above is correct, but it does not tell the whole picture. While the businessman most likely would suffer, nothing is being said about lots of innocent people that would suffer too (and being on Hacker News, the recent story of security breaches leaking lots of personal information).

Also it's not always the case that people would suffer the consequences due to a bureaucrat (assuming public office of sorts), and even if they do, it'll be less painful (distributed over all the population of the country, state or city), rather than people directly being affected by certain business.

To my friends, it's really painful that they have to pay taxes - some of them don't have kids, and they don't think they should pay for school. I fuckin don't get this, since not having good education is the road to ruin...

There is some truth in this. It is the almost-exact flip side of this: If a businessman does something right, he reaps the gains. If a bureaucrat does something right, you reap the gains.

... which doesn't sound so bad, now does it?

Neither is exactly correct. If the senior management of a large company make a big mistake, they aren't the only ones who lose: some employees may lose their jobs, the company may be less effective in providing customers with useful products or services, etc. And, conversely, if they do something very right, their employees may get bonuses or pay rises and their customers may get useful things to buy. And even government bureaucrats are likely to do better for themselves when they make good decisions than when they make bad ones.

But it's a reasonable approximation. On the whole and on average, businessmen are in business to benefit themselves, and fortunately it turns out that when you have lots of people doing that it brings benefits to everyone. On the whole and on average, government bureaucrats are in their jobs to benefit The People.

And, surprise surprise, if you focus only on the downside then you see businessmen hurting themselves and bureaucrats hurting The People. But it cuts both ways.

Makes for a catchy soundbite, what a shame it's not true.

A businessman can make a mistake that impacts millions of people. Here are a couple of prominent examples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_haemophilia_blood...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestlé_boycott#Baby_milk_issue

To summarise the first, Bayer had to stop selling some blood transfusion products in the US after they were found to be contaminated with HIV and Hepatitis C. What did they do with the blood? They sold it in Asia and South America instead. A cold-blooded capitalist may argue this was a 'win' for the company in terms of income, but regardless a business decision was made and there was huge damage as a result.

To summarise the second, Nestlé tried to encourage groups of mothers in developing countries to give up breast feeding their babies and sell them infant formula instead. They do so at first by giving out free samples. Numerous problems ensued (including the mothers' no longer being able to produce breast milk for their babies, leading to deaths once the free samples stopped and the mothers were no longer able to afford the infant formula).

There are plenty of other examples (especially in the areas of environmental pollution and worker conditions), I'm guessing I don't need to go on.

That is, anecdotally it seems if an exec makes a good decision, or even if someone at a lower level does, they will benefit substantially more than the rest of the employees. At the same time, if they make a company-endingly bad decision, employees may be out of a job while they will still probably make out okay (golden parachutes and the like).

That's why people elect representatives, to do that for them. The U.S. is not a direct democracy.

Regardless, the problems are there and must be dealt with, however difficult that is. Ignoring problems because they are difficult would be a willful negligence. It would also be irresponsible to let people suffer, and also harm our entire community, because the problems are difficult and mechanisms imperfect.

(This is conjecture, but it seems awfully plausible and explains both the observations here.)

When another group with (possibly) different norms has no affect on you, it's easy to ignore them.

When that group can exert some effect on you, but the effect is unknown, people get scared, and act accordingly. This is exacerbated by people that like attention and/or power that will stoke these fears to further their own agenda.

When that group is finally encountered, often there's understanding, a willingness to compromise where needed from both parties, and as the unknown subsides, so does much of the fear (and the power that grants those that use fear).

"This demonstrates the level of gerrymandering that republicans have accomplished, maximizing the number of districts that are republican, even if just slightly, while shoving all democrats in their states into a few districts that are heavily democratic."

http://forrestry.blogspot.com/2013/09/population-density-com...

What metric of diversity? UK is pretty diverse in larger cities.

My dad would be annoyed that he has to pay for all this "extra" stuff in order to grow his business. Simple as that. He believes that the big companies already provide some semblance of benefits so really the only people hurt are the people with small businesses. You can go get another job if you don't like it.

Just because those things are available, you are not forced to use them.

You would have the best of both worlds, because you would have more choices, not less like you have now.

If I don't want 4 weeks of vacation, why should I pay for everyone else to get 4 weeks of vacation?

You want to pay for things like that because it makes your society stronger and healthier overall.

You already pay for everyone to use the police, jails, firemen, roads, sidewalks, parks, libraries, courts, etc. etc. even though you probably don't use them, or use them frequently. Why do you pay for other people to use police, courts and jails?

Have you ever wondered why the crime rate in the US is so high compared to developed countries? One of the reasons is because people are very desperate. They have low education, no healthcare, so safety net, so they have nothing to lose. If you had "paid" for them to have those things, those people would be happier, healthier, and you wouldn't be 10 times more likely to be murdered than I am.

After 10 years in the US I went back to Australia for a few weeks and it slapped me in the face - there are very few desperate people in Australia. Even the lowest paid people have healthcare, education, own their own home and have toys like project cars.

That's just one example, but you need to stop thinking about "me, me, me" and think "us, us, us"

I like how that can work to further your point whether you read is as "us" or "U.S."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfgSEwjAeno