What, exactly, is objectionable about "socialism"?
 

For the sake of argument, let's say Obama is a "socialist". (We're really talking about the "Social Democrat" part of the political spectrum, but that's a debate for another day.)

So, what?

How is this a full repudiation of capitalism / the market system? How is the modest raising of taxes in exchange for a broader safety net such a bad thing? Does anyone really believe this is the first step toward complete socialism/communism?

Exactly how is freedom eroded in this hypothetical? Doesn't broader (practical) access to healthcare result in greater "freedom" for many (hell, for all, when we're talking about the end of sharp cost-shifting)? Aren't the (growing) gaps in coverage we have now a form of "unfreedom"?

I get the hard-right, purist libertarian view that taxes for roads, for instance, is a form of unfreedom. I'm talking about the more generic conservative view.

It seems to me that trading in the really high rollercoaster for a more tempered material existence would be attractive to just about everyone. How many genuinely need that extra 500 sq ft in a home of 4000? Isn't this part of how we got to the current situation?

(And can we avoid talk about "Satan's plan" and ad hominem smears of "Marxist!")

Doesn't this really all boil down to an aversion for (even the potential) for higher taxes? "I got mine, let everyone else figure out how to deal with their own problems" (I would argue that low taxes + higher deficits amounts to selfishness for the today, deferring problems to later generations, but that's a debate for another day.)

I guess I'm really struggling with how greater government involvement in economic matters is such a horrific development that leads to inevitable calamity.

(For the record, I favor a much more centrist approach and believe that Obama will push in that direction in the interests of forging greater national consensus.)

LOL - I'm counting a whole lot of questions in this post... but go get 'em!

There are several problems with socialism but the largest in my mind is that it suffocates the incentive to excel.

I think you missed the point of Ma-ake's post. He's suggesting that when most voters decry Obama's socialism, they're really just upset about the possible reversion to pre-Bush taxation. But that in and of itself is not socialism. If it were, then by that definition McCain and a whole host of others are socialists -- originally McCain supported the pre-Bush tax rates and opposed the cuts.

No, I think it went broader than that.

and

... go beyond merely pushing 35% back to 39.6%.

I don't know if that's true. Many of the innovative breakthroughs in medical research are coming from the UK, for example, which has a healthcare model that goes far beyond the Canadian model. (MDs are state employees. For a lot of good reasons, this model won't fly here.)

In my organization, we have a very highly motivated work force, more than I've seen at any of the private orgs I've been at in my 20+ in IT. We have no profit incentive, though we definitely have a very conservative, finite bottom line.

In my experience, nearly everyone wants to do a good job, they have a good work ethic. It seems to me that productivity is almost always tied to good leadership & management, which exists in many organizations, public & private.

I've known many young parents who took advantage of social programs to go to college, nearly all of whom did better in school because of it, and now make more money & produce more for society (including tax revenue) than if they were left to struggle through on their own. It was a very wise investment in people. (For single parents, the program produced a very high return.)

I could accept a move back to the pre-Bush tax rates. What's another $10-20 grand out of my pocket.

My problem is what lies beyond there. I really think the European model is a "cast system", I hope I spelled that right. Instead of an upward mobile society, it is an elite society and everyone else.

Look at communism. The leaders live very, very well. The elite in Europe live very, very well. It is extremely hard to break into the upper level or at least that is my view.

Check out the new rich in America vs the new rich in the European Countries like Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. Look at all the minorities in America who have become extremely rich. Can you find me minorities in the countries I have named who have become very wealthy.

[QUOTE=Ma'ake;283294]I don't know if that's true. Many of the innovative breakthroughs in medical research are coming from the UK, for example, which has a healthcare model that goes far beyond the Canadian model. (MDs are state employees. For a lot of good reasons, this model won't fly here.)

In my organization, we have a very highly motivated work force, more than I've seen at any of the private orgs I've been at in my 20+ in IT. We have no profit incentive, though we definitely have a very conservative, finite bottom line.

In my experience, nearly everyone wants to do a good job, they have a good work ethic. It seems to me that productivity is almost always tied to good leadership & management, which exists in organizations, public & private.




Maybe France has changed in the last 40 years. When I was there most of the French worried about vacation days and stuff that is free.

As far as college goes. I would like to see a study done on how successful people are who worked their way through college vs those who got it for free.

funny you should mention that. My ex-boyfriend, a PhD from caltech, moved to the UK to research because there's so little support for the scientific community here. How sad is that?

If you look at actuality versus symbols, you'd know the difference.

Socialism as a symbol, seems to undermine the incentives of capitalism. State sponsored activities, government workers and the like run counter to the fundamental principles of capitalism and frontier mentality present in the west.

In a culture which generally accepts the socialist symbol, such as France, government is not seen as the enemy but as the only entity capable of answering many questions.

In our culture, we find government to be an impediment, not a facilitator.

So for me, Obama the Socialist, symbolizes an anti-small business mentality, by reasserting pre Bush tax rates on ordinary income and capital gains, something very important to small businesses. It symbolizes a return to larger government regulations which are expensive for smaller businesses to comply with.

Are there sectors of society which benefit when government stimulates funding which private enterprise won't? Of course.

And Obama's mantra, "we'll make health care more affordable" isn't the first concern to small business owners and we don't know if the net tax increases will translate into cheaper health care.

So the reason is Socialism, especially for those of us with memories linked to the Cold War, and DeGaul (spelling?), is a strike against our very essence.

And practically for westerners or small business entrepreneurs, Obama represents the worst of all worlds, more taxation, more costs of doing business and more regulatory hassles. He is the anathema of everything we need.

Risk is tied to reward, Ma'ake. Sure there are self-motivated people who will try to do a good job no matter what station they find themselves in. But in a capitalist system what drives innovation and risk-taking is reward.

I listened to a replay last night of a 2 hour interview Hugh Hewitt did with Victor Davis Hanson. He spoke of having appendicitis and requiring an emergency operation in Libya, I think it was. As he lay there recovering, he reflected on the system there that required the doctor who operated on him to be compensated exactly equally with the guy who mopped the floors.

In such a system, why try to excel? Your overachievers might anyway, out of pure type-A drive, but society as a whole will not.

Pure capitalism has never existed. We have always been a socialist country in that the government takes our tax dollars, redistributes them to the community, has social programs, welfare, etc...

You folks are also the same people who claim that the US is a "democracy."

So this fear that the US will become socialist......we have always been socialist.

I have to run now....gotta go pay back my government subsidized student loans, drive on public roads, maybe get pulled over by the police, who are paid via our collective tax dollars....

Now, you're the jokester. We have not advocated a pure capitalistic society, and you're oversimplifying the arguments for the sake of absurdity, but its the degree of focus upon the principles. In a society focused upon capitalism, reliance upon government institutions impedes the workforce and the economic growth.

Actually, no. The Repubs are the one crying regime change. I have made no claims of any loss of capitalism, nor any increase in socialism as a result of this coming election.

I am pointing out a simple fact.....we are a socialist country already. So all these laments (yours included) that we are "headed" towards "european style socialism" are ridiculous and scaremongering......the preferred tool of the GOP.

Read your very own post....there is no real substance to it. You make claims of "degrees of focus," yet have absolutely no real way of measuring these degrees.

Yawn.

Since your post assumes a specturm or continuum, how do you propose it be measured?

Truthfully, I dont even think it is worth measuring. People are fearing a move towards socialism? what for? we have had over 40 presidents....most have raised taxes. Now all of a sudden we are at risk of crossing the tipping point and spilling into socialism?

our economy stinks, we are fighting an unpopular and expensive war.....there is a massive housing crisis and more people are losing jobs right now.....and we are lamenting that under these circumstances, the government might step up some social programs to help out?

These cries of "socialism" are akin to the crazy homeless guy with the sign that says, "The End is near."

If people don't want their taxes raised, then just say that. But they should not hide behind sweeping claims of "european style socialism" and "marxism."

I guess one thought is that in citing "european style socialism," are those folks admitting that there is a "US style socialism?" If so, then I can get on board with that.

My concern would be along the lines of BYU71. I'm not afraid of the label of "socialism" if we reach the kind of society that I would like to be a part of. I think the thing that frightens conservatives is the holding up of Europe as the "ideal". Europe (France, at least) seemed very caste-like, as BYU71 pointed out. I know there are statistics that show that mobility between classes has steadily declined in the US--I'd be curious to see the comparison with France. Maybe this is just a function of a much older government and society.

Additionally, the average French citizen seemed worse off than the average American--it was rare to have two cars, rare to even have a clothes-drier or a microwave, to point out a few examples. At the same time, there were fewer poor and certainly a better safety net. So where do our collective values lie--a Rawlsian ideal or one of individualism? We as a country have always favored the latter, so the term "socialist" is fairly effective as a scare tactic. Perhaps we're shifting.

France is an interesting case study. On the one hand it is held up as an example for nuclear energy, on the other hand it is used as a sledge hammer in debating whether to move even an inch left on the scale.

I think the French culture itself is a very big part of their economic troubles. When you have a nation where truck drivers feel empowered to bring economic activity to a standstill, that's a toxic cultural characteristic you wouldn't find here. I can't imagine any scenario where Americans would tolerate that kind of selfishness by one group.

For example, here's a private-only action that would be a national disaster - what if all the home owners who are under water on their mortages decided to "strike" until they got more favorable rates and/or lowered mortage loans. It would be a calamity... but no tax money would be involved!

See Canada, pre-Thatcher UK, and France. I think government control is also a slippery slope. So see the USSR, the PRC, Cuba.

People are still praising the U.S.'s resiliant capitalist system. Remember when Europe called this financial crisis largely a U.S. phenomenon a few weeks ago? Well, what really was happening is U.S. lenders, less enmeshed with the government, were quicker to discern and publicise their catastrophic problems than European counterparts. But for U.S. leadership, iroically stemming from U.S. free enterprise's original self-diagnosis, all the socialist countries of Europ would still be staggering along in a blind torpor, heading for depression and untold human mysery. If the U.S. goes socialist, it will destry an essential part of what makes the U.S. great, what makes it the most innovative and dynamic society in history.

But I'm starting to think the whole country has gone wussified like you, Ma'ake.

These are bizarre examples of a slippery slope towards heavy government intervention given that pretty much all of these countries used to have kings, monarchies, aristocracies, czars (or tsars, for crossword puzzle purposes), etc.

Shallow. The UK has been free of monarchy for longer than we have, as a practical matter. In fact, a thousand years from now historians will recognize that the Americal Revolution was just the climax of a long road climbed by Britons for millenea. This is the irony: because the UK restored free enterprise and civil liberties absent from our world since Julius Caesar without having to kill its royalty, it never had to kill its royalty and they still live as ornaments.

UK's experimentation with socialism and abridgement of civil liberties (still ongoing) is actually a cautionary tale for us. We and our mother country are comparable, indeed of a piece, in our historical fight agains authoritarianism. When Hitler, Stalin, Marx, etc. railed agaisnt the filthy, materialistic capitalist nations (as Waters' and Lebowski's friends the Islamofacists do now), they were primarily talking about Great Britain, though GB's maturing and restless offspring to the west loomed large.

LOL. The UK has been free of monarchy? I know you have been there....did you happen to look at the coins? the stamps? The palace in the middle of Westminster? Where does the Queen get the dosh to buy all those hats? The entire royal family basically lives off the dole.

From a legal perspective, yes I agree that the royals are mere symbols. From a financial perspective, they are the biggest welfare cases in Europe.

Next time you run into the Queen, refuse to bow. See how well that goes over with the general population. You will quickly see how far Europe has truly strayed from its dynastic origins.

Yes, I've been there. Nothing in your post contradicts my point. But I think your treating "Europe" as a single monolithic phenomenon is way wrong.

Hey, you're the feminist! ;)

You can't possibly believe that explanation on why US lenders copped to the disaster before everyone else. Because of the unregulated casino, *they* were the ones deepest in the bog, the ones who excavated the pit for the world economy to dig out of!

Paulson & his cronies got together & looked at each other & realized they put the entire economy at risk due to 1) their unbridled greed, and 2) their skill at convincing Greenspan & others that said greed was doing everyone else a massive favor. It was Paulson who had to get up on the political cross and take the heat for most of Wall Street.

(The accounts of the "let's all put our cards on the table" meeting between the Wall Street honchos and Paulson are fascinating, namely the revelation that the Lehman chiefs "looked like zombies").

Meanwhile, Bernanke is left to wonder why in the hell he decided to follow Greenspan.

Our way of life & core economic vibrancy are not put at risk by moving, in an American way, to the left a couple of notches.

My point is that comparing Europe to the US is a bit disingenuous given that their economies are all rooted in principles of monarchy, royalty, etc.. The US was founded on principles of democracy and capitalism.

If you were to put them all on a continuum, with Monarchy at the right and Democracy (or republicanism) at the left, Europe has gradually shifted from the far right towards the middle. Given Europe's roots, of course it will tend to be more socialist than the US.

The US never really was purely on the left, as I pointed out earlier, because we have always had a system of taxation in place, and welfare/social programs for quite a long time. So we are moving from the left towards the middle.

I personally do not believe that we would ever move past the middle because it simply is not in our DNA to do so.

WHat does that mean, to say an economy is founded on principles of monarchy? IN terms of the function or structuer of their economies, what ius different becasue they were founded on principles of monarchy?

This may be true, as it has not in the past. Greenspan may even agree with you. But that isn't the question posed by your original troll, er, post.

Interesting how Obama unfiltered doesn't taste so great to even his most ardent supporters. I haven't seen anyone here defend socialism, protectionism, isolationism, abandonment of historic commitments, even substantially increased regulation.

That's a cheap shot. Sounds just like something Pat Robertson would say.

Selective land ownership, caste system with no upward mobility (as 71 points out), only certain people could own and operate businesses, heavy ridiculous taxation without representation.....coupled with the monarch having the responsibility of providing for the common defense. Granted, not sure how expansive welfare/social programs were. Also, the monarch in large part controlled the clergy.

You see faint traces of that in Europe still today, esp with regards to royals living off revenues generated from all their land grabbing. There is still a general deference to royals in all things, despite the fact that in many of those countries, actual leaders are elected and leave office much like in our system. Common defense has morphed into social programs such as medicine.

In contrast, our elected officials are out after a period of a few years. Anyone can start a business. Today anyone can own land (although not previously) . We have privatized businsses, but not entirely....we also have government oversight, regulatory committees, SEC reporting requirements...all things that are rooted in socialist principles of government intervention. I think the big difference is simply the degree to which we practice our socialism. But i dont ever think we would get to the point where the average Joe Six Pack would stomach using our tax dollars to support an extravagant lifestyle for the Clintons and all their heirs in perpetuity.

I'm pleased you're unconcerned that an Obama presidency will put us on a slippery slope to French, leftist UK, German, USSR or PRC ethos. That you have given this some thought, and such would be unacceptable to you, says something good about you. I hope you're right.

What amazes me is the youthful naivete which accompanies the DDDs of the world, who believe we should look to history when it supports their view of the world, but ignore it when we remind them of failed experiments elsewhere.

There is no risk DDD in moving to the left, no economic risk, no social risk, because we are American and we can combat the perils of this position. Any social change causes harm, but the question is on balance is the harm caused less than the "good" achieved. Proponents of increasing socialism in our economy ignore this discussion, as they seem to assume all government intervention is good and proper.

For example, proponents of Obama's new healthcare organization ignore the harm created by the DHHS and how much it had harmed our health care system, but they march naively ahead, let's have another huge government bureaucracy.

No poster has addressed this issue. Why?

Proponents of increasing our reliance upon goverment to solve social and economic issues seem to take the easy, lazy approach, "make another program, that will fix everything," instead of a way to stimulate natural market forces, provide checks and balances against monopolies and anti-competitive forces and to encourage financial transparency, while increasing liquidity and capital into financial markets. Why no nuance?

Having lived in Canada for over 14 years I can honestly say that there is very little difference between the two countries. Yes, I pay more taxes in certain regards yet there is zero evidence to support the hyperbolic statement “it suffocates the incentive to excel.”

All that being said, IMO, Americans are not prepared for the expanded socialist policies that Obama will introduce as President and I fear the repercussions.

I am not saying there is no risk of moving towards the right (using my continuum example)...I am saying that there is little likelihood.

If you want to look at history and failed experiments, fine, let's do so.....recently, Hillary tried to roll out Universal Health Care. It crashed, burned, and failed miserably. Yet you lament the impending socialization of our healthcare....why? Makes no sense.

If you go back to earlier this year when the election talk on here started to heat up, I was the only person who suggested that truthfully, not much of anything will change....we will see.

Let's revisit this in one year and see if we are a socialized country with free healthcare for everyone. My guess is that nothing will have changed, we will hopefully be coming out of the economic slump, and we will still be in Iraq. You could be right, though. We could be Europe by next year, which would be nice because it is too expensive to visit over there right now.

I thought this statement was ridiculous also, but then I considered the source.

Advances in medicine, technology, art, science......those things come largely from capitalist countries, I guess.

"Zero" evidence? Heh. Right ... those teeming, huddled masses were coming from capitalist countries.

But don't listen to me, tainted source that I am.

http://www.fee.org/publications/the-...e.asp?aid=4014

Tex, do you really want to argue from a position of absolute ignorance? Do you really think millions of immigrants to Canada from all over the globe are NOT living the north american dream because they chose to settle north of the 49th?

Would you like me to trot out example after example of successful immigrants to Canada I personally know, work with, attend church with?

How about the family or individual from ..

China
Korea
Philippines
Sri Lanka
Albania
Hungary
Congo
Ivory Cost
Dominica
Jamaica
Barbados
St. Vincent
South Africa
Iran
Afghanistan
Pakistan

Come on, tooblue, you're oversimplifying. There's a world of gray between pure socialist and pure capitalist, and neither the US nor Canada is at either extreme, though Canada is further to the left.

Indeed, for this reason it's hard to look at any one nation (in the western world at least) and classify it so simplistically. Instead we have to look at socialist experiments within sectors of free nations, and to large degree they are substandard. I blame this, as do many cheery capitalists, on the death of incentive.

argumentum ad absurdum.

Nobody's arguing it will happen overnight, you're mischaracterizing the arguments in order to prevail.

And you dismiss the concerns out of hand. That doesn't mean there aren't risks.

And here's the great Lie, nothing is ever free for everyone.

I agree....it wont happen overnight, if at all...which is why i dont care about it.

If anything, you are the one arguing it will happen overnight. You have taken the position that all these things will happen within the next 4 years...during Obama's presidency.

The final two sentences of your statement only further demonstrates the willfulness of your ignorance. Pray tell what Canadian 'experiment' in your estimation is sub-standard? Please also point out the standard you are using to arrive at your estimation. In addition, please provide evidence to support the assertion that socialism is the (or a) root cause of the death of incentive.

We will spend all day arguing in circles.

Therefore, all that is left for us to do is classify the issue 'so simplistically' in an attempt to see the bigger picture.

You are a liar. I have not said so much.

It will be a process which once set in motion will be nigh impossible to reverse. Examine the British experience in health care and you'll know what I mean.

I trust no argument which starts, "well he won't be able to achieve that because Hillary couldn't..." That's a true red herring, and you know it.

Figures, you lived in Bolivia. You underestimate the risks and overvalue the benefits.