• Buffalox@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    In a civilized country these things simply wouldn’t happen.
    Not paying an employee is simply illegal, and If what is happening in USA now happened here, we have public funds guaranteeing any unpaid employee by any employer get their money. Usually used for private companies that go bankrupt.

    USA is such a shitty country, their regulation is of the caliber that would only be expected of a very poor developing country that lack resources to do better.

    I don’t think most Americans are even close to understanding how shitty USA is as a country. It permeates everything because Americans accept their society to be shitty, because they kind of accept a minimal government that doesn’t even work.

    Having a country with a two party system that begs for stalemates, and then is incapable of handling a stalemate is such tremendous lack of foresight, I bet most kindergartens are run better.

    • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      This is the system republicans created and democrats cosigned. Republicans could at any moment dismiss the fillibuster and return these people to work but they’ve decided to let this happen to try and use media asymmetries to blame it on democrats in hopes they cave without negotiations.

      Hopefully the democrats realize if they cave here they will never be elected again. Republicans will keep doing this until either they eliminate the fillibuster or they start caring about rules and the country so it makes sense for democrats to just hold the line and force some more permanent change in either republicans or the rules.

    • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
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      1 day ago

      Not paying an employee is simply illegal, and If what is happening in USA now happened here, we have public funds guaranteeing any unpaid employee by any employer get their money. Usually used for private companies that go bankrupt.

      Laws in most civilized countries simply say that if new budget is not passed in time the previous budget continues or default budget covering basic expenses (like federal workers salaries, bills etc.) is automatically created. Shutting down government is simply not an option.

      • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        True, I have not heard of other countries that do what USA is doing with the shutdown.
        Americans are such a bunch of amateurs on democracy, despite they were among the first to use it!
        Or maybe because of it? They sorely need a major reform of their democracy. But it looks like it will probably be the wrong way to an even more authoritarian system.

        • lordbritishbusiness@lemmy.world
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          15 hours ago

          Yep, if a parliament fails to pass budget “Supply” legislation in Australia there’s an automatic procedure that desolves the government and sends them to an election.

          And the public hate elections. Do it to them out of sequence without good reason? You’re not getting back in.

          • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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            10 hours ago

            And I guess all the ministers lose their seats, that would also be motivation to get it done.

        • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
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          1 day ago

          The problem is that they were “early adopters” and created a system impossible to reform. Civil war was the perfect moment to do a major rewrite of the system. They had a human rights issue and their system proved completely unable to resolve it. Unfortunately instead of realizing it’s broken and fixing it they did some minor changes and moved on. Now they have a constitution that is more of a holy book than legal document. No one understands it, the laws don’t mean anything but it’s sacred so it’s impossible to even talk about changing it.

        • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          I think they can’t because their constitution is a holy text from the heavens and therefore cannot be trashed (or archived) and rewritten from scratch.

          • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            It literally has amendments. The latest one was ratified in 1992. The founding fathers considered the constitution to be a living document, hence why there is an amendment process.

            Ironically, the people treating the constitution like gospel are the same people that keep ignoring it.

            • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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              1 day ago

              It’s the thing conservatives do. They just say stuff for effect and don’t care about truth or consistency.

              The Constitution is a perfect document that must be upheld when it suits their goals, and a living document that must be updated when that suits their goals instead. They are liars. They should not be accepted in polite society.

            • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
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              1 day ago

              The same founding fathers that apparently thought it was a document that would probably be replaced after a few decades? (Or is this something everyone says that has no basis in reality? )

              • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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                21 hours ago

                Maybe? I don’t recall them suggesting that it should be replaced every few decades.

                Worth pointing out that there is a process in the constitution for changing the constitution, but there is no process for replacing the entire document. So I’d say there is pretty obvious intent for the document to change/evolve over time.

                Hypothetically, we could amend the constitution to have a process for replacing the whole document though.

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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      1 day ago

      We don’t have a “minimal government” because we still pay just as much in taxes and healthcare costs as everyone else. We just don’t see any benefits from that money, it all gets funneled to the oligarchs.

    • Typhoon@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      I don’t think most Americans are even close to understanding how shitty USA is as a country.

      They’re brainwashed from birth to believe they’re the greatest country in the world. Most of them never question it. Those that do need years to overcome the beliefs embedded in their heads.

      • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Yes American exceptionalism is pretty crazy.

        The arrogance of calling a national championship “World Series” is a very clear example of that, and also calling the country America is another blatant example of exceptionalism.
        It is this exceptionalism that makes Trump believe he can bully the rest of the world into submission. But all it will do is accelerate the fall of USA from being the de facto world leader.

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

    • krashmo@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I don’t have to know where you live to say that you’re trending this direction too. If you’re not vigilant you’ll find yourself in the same position before too long.

      • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        That is only true to a minor degree regarding immigrants, we are not on the way to become an authoritarian hellhole, and our democracy is in no way threatened. We do not have a single anti democratic party in parliament among the 12 parties represented here, and we do not have the systemic problems or extremism USA has.

        Saying we (Denmark) are heading in the same direction is a false equivalence. Saying it about EU is false too, although there are right wing tendencies in some regions, I am pretty sure they are temporary. For instance even if AfD should become the biggest party in Germany, they can never form a government alone (government is comparable to the US administration), except the checks and balances by parliament are way stronger.

        By far the most EU democracies are way way stronger than USA, because they are not built undemocratically to be 2 party systems like USA and UK.