It's obvious that the Democratic party has taken on a role of being socialist. My question is why? We know that it goes against human nature to mesh people together a form an entirely new being: a socialist country. With the new president with his new law I'm just wondering if I'm in United State of America or NAZI Germany. This is a hypothetical example of socialism: There is a village with ten people in it. The entire village decides to create an area where all of the people’s harvest gets collected then distributed amongst the citizens. Let’s say Sully Fishman, a hard working civilian, decides he has worked to hard and needs “a break”. Sully decides not to fish, therefore not to contribute to the pot. Now Eartha, the farmer, sees Sully’s “break” and says to herself, “I, too, have been working long and hard. One break won’t hurt.” And so she too takes a break surviving off the pot. Soon seven other people follow in there footsteps and mooch off of one man busting his butt to take care of them. If someone has a logical answer, please reply to this :shrug:
The United States has many elements of socialism, as do many European countries. Socialism just means the collective ownership of certain institutions. We have collective ownership of highways, schools, the military, firefighters, national parks, emergency room service. etc... To say that giving tax breaks to people so that they can buy private insurance is the road to Nazi Germany is a laughable concept. Bernie Sanders is a Democratic Socialist. Socialism is perfectly compatable with the US constitution and Democracy. I think most Americans would agree that complete socialism goes too far, that collective ownership of everything doesn't work out so well. But we can have the best of both worlds.
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. "Necessitous men are not free men." People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed. Among these are: The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation; The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living; The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad; The right of every family to a decent home; The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health; The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; The right to a good education. All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being. FDR, State of the Union, 1944
A better question is, why are we still trying to make unregulated (or underregulated) capitalism work?
You just watch your mouth mister; those two phrases are very insulting to all the leftists of sciforums. And yes there is a logical answer; illogic is the only means to the left. It isn't fair that those who want the break you should ever have to go back to work if they really don't want to, and so the doers should provide. And why, because they didn't legitimately earn their money anyway. Word of advice: Don't waste your time here arguing with lefties, they will get you banned because they can only win arguments with themselves. Therefore they must eliminate all opposing views. So, they side with a mod who covers their asses, so both can feel good about themselves.
There is no more severe indictment of the American high schools than the visible percentage of American high school graduates who think making people buy health insurance from private corporations is socialist. That giving billions of tax dollars to private banks, including a private central bank incorporated to monopolize the management of the nations public money supply, is socialist. That government authority and regulation is socialist. That taxation itself is socialist. And that socialism is bad. These people cannot begin to discuss the economic morass the US has dug itself into. They have no way to begin describing the world around them, and lacking such description have great difficulty in even remembering what happened last year, let alone evaluating the trends of the past thirty years. Someone who states simple and obvious facts - the Congress of the United States, Dems and Reps together, is dominated by right wing authoritarian ideology, so are the major news delivery corporations; The health care system in the US delivers on average lower quality medical care to its citizens, at much hither cost, than that of most other first world countries - sounds like they are from another planet, in this environment. Our central problem, the major difficulty afflicting the US in its search for political solutions to its sever political problems, is that it is a democracy whose citizens have no vocabulary or basis of information to use in discussing these problems. The meanings of the common political terms, and the nature of political argument, have been all but destroyed.
Completely ridiculous. The Republican politicians during Richard Nixon's presidency were more socialist than today's Democratic Party politicians are. Socialist would have done Medicare for all not a mandate to buy insurance. I don't get the enthusiasm for Beck/Limbaugh idiocy. Rah Rah Rah grrrr. Reminds me of dogs that get all ferocious tearing up the mail as it comes through the mail slot. It may be entertaining but it is not useful or sophisticated and some of that mail might not be junk mail.
I don't mind some socialism - of some things, but, I know how fracking lazy people are. I grew up on welfare and hated it. I feel it destroyed my mother's life. And it wasn't meant to be a life long arrangement. This is what worries me. Kind of like paying Federal Tax, soon enough people think it's normal - when it isn't and never was meant to be. I have lived with and without health care. I have lived in countries with so-called free health care and those without. I've trained med students in medical school. The solution is for government to support the creation of many more medical schools and open up more hospitals and train more specialists. Just a month ago I was listening to people in the field complain there's going to be a bubble and a drop in the living wage of MDs. Well, guess what, that's what happens when you restrict the market. If the market were working we'd have cheaper health care and many more employed MDs with no worry about a bubble. Playing catch up is creating a bubble and sure it will probably sting a lot of MDs who end up as GPs. That aside, - I'm worried about the expansion of government. - I'm also worried about the way in which Americans perceive the role of the government in our lives. - I don't like that we see our Civil Servants as "Leaders" and not Servants. Sure, they must lead, but, they do so AS a service to the State and Servant to the Citizenry. - I'd like to see the cap lifted on the House. It didn't used to have a cap and now that it does - our Representatives are too few to cover so many Citizens. I think it needs to be tripled or even quadrupled. Yes, some things need governmental support. Maybe, for now, medicine is one of those things. But, we should always be working towards the day when the market (that is, free choice) sets the stage. NOT a bureaucrat living in DC and manipulated by Senators who are in debt to their backers. We bailed out bankers who turned around and awarded themselves 100s of billions in bonuses - and not a single pitch fork Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! that's a bad sign....
There is not, has never been, and never will be a free market in modern first world medical care or medical insurance for ordinary citizens of any country. If you pretend there is, or that you can make one, you will be living in a society in which ordinary people can afford only poor care, and poor people cannot obtain medical care at all. If you are sufficiently stubborn about it, you can even abet jacking the price up to where the majority of the people in the society cannot obtain first world medical care. Imagine the situation in the US right now if Medicare had never been invented, and all those old folks were buying their own care and insurance on some kind of pretend "free market". There were lots of pitchforks - they just had a hard time finding a target. They milled around in confusion for a while, a little bit shocked, before their leaders told them who the socialists were, the leftists and haters of America who had caused all these problems by imposing big government and letting black people buy houses they couldn't afford. Now they are going to do something about it.
The process the OP is talking about is neotany. The highest state of evolution. Basically because we can, we all act as children. We fail to take responsibility for things because it doesn't matter. There is no life and death, so people just don't bother.
He's talking about the tragedy of the commons, where self interest on the part of individuals results in the destruction of shared resources. I think it's human nature not to have to rely on others. We want to be self-sufficient. We should not let a few lazy people ruin institutions that truly contribute to the well being of our civilization as a whole. Do we really want to go back to the bad old days of poor houses and old people having to fend for themselves on the streets? I think most people would agree that having unemployment insurance is a good thing, that social security has prevented the worst examples of poverty in the elderly, that if the commons is rationed intelligently, we can all benefit. The opposite, unregulated capitalism and little or no taxes, results in the kind of society that Charles Dickens wrote about, where child labor is common, there is a huge gap between rich and poor, there is no middle class, and everyone except an elite class of people are uneducated and permanently victimized.
A couple of things, socialism is an economic system. The term Nazi refers to a political system - not an economic system. You appear to be confusing economic systems with political systems. The two are very distinct and seperate entities. Two, I think you will find most small societies, tribal societies, were socialistic. They hunted and gathered and shared with each other. Three, as has been pointed out by other authors, most modern economies are mixed economies and are mixed for a very good reason. Neither economic system is without out its flaws. It just so happens that a mixed economic system yeilds the best bang for the buck. That is why it is such a popular system around the globe.
I thought Nazism was fascism, quite the opposite of socialism, but it just implies dictatorship, which is what typified both movements in reality.
But fascism, as opposed to NAZIsm, does at least incorporate (fundamentally) an economic system - government of corporate interests backed by the military is at bottom an economic system. The Nazis were a political entity, with a Party and lots of political structure, but they were not the only fascistic politicians even at the time. If somebody wants to restrict the term "NAZI" to actual Nazis, that would be an improvement in accuracy. Getting that baggage off of the term "fascist" would be a bonus - we need the term.
@John Gault: So stop the world already, and let me know where your super secret colony is... Signed, Channeling Ayn Rand
