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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (67569)	10/16/2008 2:58:12 PM
From: thames_sider	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

What the hell? Why is a Brit worrying about how much taxes an American plumber should pay? No, thats strange. I'm not specifically worried about that - such probably would qualify as strangeness. If you check through the thread, indeed the post you link, what I find pleasing is that it's one of the rare times I've noticed a politician say more or less openly to a voter that he would pay higher taxes. Hence "Which IMO is why politicians like to be vague on the specifics - it doesn't do to let too many people know who the losers are." But more generally, I am interested in the US for exactly the reasons Oeconomicus quoted. What happens in the US is almost more important than who leads our country, especially under Blair who followed Bush to IMO an unhealthy and unwise extent. Your foreign policy almost completely dictated ours for six years. Economically, also, sterling largely tracks (or at least correlates to) the dollar more than it does the euro, and many of the ideas in play are American. Additionally US politics are much more reported in the UK than those of any other country, even within the English-speaking world (probably again for the same reasons), which makes them easy to follow. I doubt most British could name any foreign candidates for power, in any election, other than the US. This dominance may not be noticeable to you, but I assure you it is overseas. Possibly most important to this forum, though, there's also a form of what in stock terms is called survivor bias - I tend to discuss Australian and ZA politics with people I know IRL from those countries and share an interest, not online. You don't see the other discussions because they're not here: for example I discussed US politics with our next-but-one neighbours, who were from Houston (and returned there just in time for Ike, unfortunately). However I don't live or work with any Americans at present so I tend to discuss US politics with the people who are interested in it who I can talk with - i.e., on here. That actually tends to be why I'm here - so of course I seem unusually interested; I'm not a random sample. (and as it happens, I have also lived and worked in the US in the past, as have friends of mine... I enjoyed it more than they did).