Tell me, can you name one country where socialism has been successful? And please don't use Scandinavia. Those countries are a market-based economy. They are not the socialist paradise some leftists claim. Also, explain why Europe has had economic problems ever since they adopted "Democratic Socialism?" [which is a contradiction in terms.]
The only difference between communism and socialism is the way it's implemented. Many people claim that various nations that experimented with both ways were not practicing the real thing, because greedy people took over the govt. and turned it into a dictatorship.
What many people don't seem to realize is, it goes against human nature to share resources for the common good. We are naturally selfish, territorial creatures, and like to be rewarded for doing hard work. Do you really think you're gonna be motivated to do your job well, whether you're paid or not? Do you really think the government, the cold, unfeeling, selfish, lowest bidder in everything, is gonna have your best interests at heart when it comes to intimate parts of your life? Do you really think life will improve for everyone if we "rob the rich" (the elite) to feed the poor? There isn't enough to go around, even if we did confiscate everything the rich in America had. Even Fort Knox doesn't have enough money to fill such a bottomless pit. And once you start pouring money into such a pit, you will never see it again in such quantities.
Margaret Thatcher was quoted as saying "Socialism is great until you run out of OTHER people's money," namely, robbing all the rich to pay for government programs, but eventually, the debt that the country racks up from people not producing as well catches up to them, whether it takes 10 years or 80.
If you actually looked into the plans various organizations that don't have America's best interests at heart had, one of the first steps they planned to implement to take over America and destroy it from within, is to take over the healtcare system. Others included stamping out Christianity and taking over our public school system. If you're too blind to see it in front of you, you are too stupid to live.
Yes, lobbying is an issue in our government, but how do you, a keyboard warrior, intending to deal with it, beyond pissing and moaning about it on a movie chat site? You are just one person, amongst millions of others who don't like what they're seeing, and yet I don't see you going out and doing something about it.
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chrisjdel (2714)
5 years ago
Uh ... here you are on the same site. So what does that make you? And you have no idea what I do with most of my time. Yet suddenly you know everything about me. How did that happen?
Did you not understand my point that all western democracies are hybrid socialist-capitalist systems? The only thing that changes going from one to the next is the exact balance they strike. You seem to have mostly ignored that part. There ARE no successful socialist countries but there are plenty of successful democratic socialist ones. The two systems are not the same. And don't even think of trotting out a reference to Venezuela, a country run by military dictators who SAY they're socialists. The official name of North Korea is the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) even though it's neither democratic nor a republic. Authoritarian leaders lie to make their regimes sound more benign. What else is new? Right wingers need to stop using Venezuela in their talking points because it's a dumb example.
The current health care system - the business end of it, not the doctors and hospitals which are first rate - is nothing but a giant empire of greed. As I said before single payer would cost at least $2 trillion dollars less over the next ten years than our current system. And that figure came from a Koch Brothers study that made the most pessimistic possible assumptions in several areas to AVOID coming to the conclusion they came to anyway. You need to ditch the idea that because you're ideologically against something, it cannot work. It not only does work, it works better than the crap system we have now AND frees up (not costs us) money. Big pharma and the insurance companies are the only losers. Cry me a river!
We don't take all the money from the rich - you didn't read what I said very carefully, did you? Yes, they need to pay their damn taxes and stop being allowed to loophole their way out of it. But what we need are laws similar to what some other countries have tying CEO and executive pay to the pay of the company's lowest tier workers. Setting a limit of, say, a factor of 30. That means you can pay yourself at most thirty times what a janitor at your company makes. If you want to make more, you have to give everyone else a raise. Who cares how competitive American companies are if most employees are living paycheck to paycheck so the top management can make billions? Who cares what the GDP is if almost all of it goes to the top 1%? I mean honestly, what good does it do us to have a strong economy if it's only strong for a few?
Other than countries like Greece, who grossly mismanaged their internal finances, Europe has been doing as well as we have. And the standard of living for the European middle class is higher on average than it is for their counterparts here in the US.
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