system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Bernie Sanders' policies were nowhere as good as his ideals

First off, I want to say that I agree with Bernie's ideas overall.  
I think the assurance of a minimum wage is very important to guarantee a minimum standard of life, I think college in the US is crazy expensive, wage inequality is a serious problem, and so on.  

Over his campaign, many times it seemed like sanders was taking problems, finding a rational solution and taking them to their most reasonable extreme.  
The economic and practical implications for his policy was many times not considered or ignored.

Take for an example:  
He wanted to raise the minimum wage throughout the states. Fair enough, it is a good idea. But he extends it to a point with seemingly no reason by saying the federal minimum wage should be the same in every state, 15$.  
The cost of living sometimes varies wildly from state to state and town to town, and choosing a single value for the whole country is one of the worst possible implementations of a great idea. 


Another example is his stance on trade:  
He wants to promote American small businesses, makes sense.  
But he proposes to reduce the levels of which free trade is implemented internationally with the US, with protectionist policy.  
Not only does that conservative vision go against his more progressive stance on most issues, it shows a disregard for the economy and people overall. Globalization being fought against by a superpower naught lead to dire consequences.  

First of all, protectionism usually leads to a in increase in prices, as you can not import as much or as cheaply anymore. This increase will be felt much more by middle to low income households, the ones he's trying to protect.  

Secondly, although it's usually accepted that a president's duty is to serve his country, it is also important to recognize that he's in a position of great power to influence people's lives from all around the world and should have their well being in mind as well.  
Protectionist measures can very easily lead do many people in low income countries to lose their jobs, destabilizing their economies and so on.  
And many of these people don't have any other means of subsistence, their economies are structured based on the cheap labour they provide to richer countries.  

So essentially, by trying to protect American businesses, you might be inadvertently starving millions of people elsewhere in the world, and that should be a very important concern for anybody who claims to want the best for mankind. 


Thank you for taking the time for reading and please CMV.
gpt
I would argue that *most* political policies are not as good as the ideals espoused by politicians. This is because politics by nature is a game of compromise - while someone 30 years ago may have *wanted* full rights for gay people, they probably had to fight tooth and claw to get even basic protections for gay people, like civil unions and protected classes and shit, and calling for full marriage equality was unlikely to get them elected.

Its why you have those videos of Hillary and Obama from 20 years ago saying "Marriage is between a man and a woman" - that's cause although they were fairly progressive politicians at the time, the times were different.

Politics is not a game of *ideals*, its a career where you actually have to *get things done*. This means compromise with your political enemies, which means your proposed policies will NEVER be as strong as your ideals are.

The only people whose policies and ideals match up perfectly are extremists. Bernie was fairly extreme for the Democratic primaries, but he was far from the furthest left we have.