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by TMWNN·5y ago·view on hn ↗
I wish more people would understand this. Those (both American leftists, and Europeans who listen to them) who say that "Democrats in the US would be right wing in Europe/Canada" have to (for example) then agree that all major political parties in Canada and every European country outside the UK and Ireland are right of US Democrats, because there is no significant opposition to voter ID laws anywhere. Macron's Les Republicains got elected because voters liked his vow to get tough on unions and union pensions, and privatize more infrastructure, neither of which appears in Biden's campaign platform.

Speaking of which, several European countries have privatized post offices; not just telecom companies that were parts of PTTs, but entire postal services. It is the rare European country that hasn't sold off at least part of their postal services. The EU explicitly requires postal monopolies to end in member states; whether government-owned or not, EU postal services do not have the USPS's monopoly on first-class mail. Yet no major party in the US seriously talks about privatizing the USPS.[1] Does this mean that American politics is "far to the left" of that of Germany and the UK, both of which have completely sold off their postal services to private investors?

[1] 1 And no, it's not because of the Constitution. Article I Section 8 only gives Congress the authority "To establish Post Offices", as opposed to requiring a government-run one. Certainly nothing in the Constitution mandates the USPS's first-class mail monopoly.

1 comments
EU market liberalization makes sense because there are already at least 20+ would be competitors for almost everything.

I have no idea how well this turned out in practice, especially considering that market harmonization/standardization is a basically a must have to have efficiency at scale.

The big difference seems to be healthcare and education. Where there's a primary state funded/owned/operated/mandated provider/option. Which sort of helps with keeping a ceiling on prices.

But at the same time youth unemployment was (and probably still is) very high, despite easy access to higher education. US unemployment rates reached its low point before covid19 probably because so much is tied to employment and there are so few restrictions on hiring and firing folks compared to some "average/median" EU jurisdiction.

Then of course there are very real far right parties with power too, so yeah, it's a lot less true that US Dems are so right of Europe politics. While at the same time a very authoritarian group runs the current US federal show, with a very real chance of that continuing, which unfortunately doesn't help with the polarization of politics.