New USA map making the rounds

[BPSCG]

And here is what the country has looked like to New Yorkers for years:

 

[Darat]

It soon will be. Recent news over the last few days...Germany unemployment rate is now at 10.5%. U.S. is at 5.5%. Case closed.

Margaret Thatcher.."Eventually, socialists run out of spending other people's money."

Thatcher is not the best person to use if you've just made a point about unemployment rates, unless to say how bad they were under her leadership.

Under her so-called leadership and economic policies, the unemployment rate reached 12%.

And perhaps if you swapped to the UK “socialist” policies you may be able to get your unemployment rate down to something like the UKs?

 

[Darat]

Fascinating map. What are the black counties?

Rapture already taken place.

 

[Carn]

It soon will be. Recent news over the last few days...Germany unemployment rate is now at 10.5%. U.S. is at 5.5%. Case closed.

Margaret Thatcher.."Eventually, socialists run out of spending other people's money."

If things develop in the way you indicate, the term "liberal" could become a compliment, at least in Germany.

The economic ideas of the german liberal party are mostly critized by the left social democratic party(ruling at the moment) in general with something like:"if those cold hearted capitalist fans ever get to rule, they would obliterate social welfare state and we would get a cruel hire and fire capitalism like it exists in the US"

Though of course this shifts liberals position a bit more to the extreme, than it actually is, this attacks are normally difficult for them to counter, because its close to what they actually want, so at least the german liberal party economic politics is very far from socialism.
Therefore making no difference between "liberals" and "socialists" seems stupid , when looking at german politics.

Also be aware that in germany (mainly east) a socialistic democratic party exists(hanging around 5% of vote for whole germany, 0.5% in the west and 20% in the east) and the economic politics this party would pursue, when ruling would be as far away from what the social democrats do, as german social democrats are away from american republicans.

So the three terms "liberal", "social" and "socialistic", which seem to be nearly identical political speeking in the US, represent 3 very different positions in Germany:

-liberal: pro gay marriage and abortion, but also wanting to seriously cut down the welfare state

-social: want to keep the social state at roughly the current level, maybe reduce it a bit and when economy goes again, increase to the point where it just does not hampers economy seriously

-socialists: still not convinced communism is in principle a bad idea, just the implementation was bad, a refined version could do far better(though PR problems causes them to call it socialism) and Germany is a good place to do this

Carn

 

[zakur]

A variation of the theme: