Isn't some socialism needed?

[KingFlorez]

And already present in these things:

Roads
Police
Firefighters

people can't afford to drive on private roads and pay for security and safety, so socialism is needed at times

[Dr.Phool]

1. Yes, and a lot of it.

Medical care and education would be good places to start.

[GreenPartyVoter]

13. Agreed.. cradle-to-grave and publicly funded

[Maple]

2. Find a different name for it

'Socialism' won't sell. Frame the language

[patrice]

5. At its most basic it simply means that the Group recognizes its

responsibilities to the Individual.

I think we should prevent the same thing happening to Socialism that happened to Liberal. It may not be exactly the word that we choose, but we shouldn't run and hide from it when it is used on us. We shouldn't appear that there is something about it that we should apologize for.

[Maple]

6. The word is already dead

in the water, and has been for years.

Don't keep fighting lost battles

Frame the language to the audience.

[patrice]

8. If by that you mean we should work more on the understanding

that the Group does have obligations to its Individuals, no matter what we call that, I agree.

[Maple]

9. Yes

'the greater community'...'one nation' 'our brother's keeper'....ANYTHING but socialism

[NorthernSpy]

26. In Venezuela, they still call it "socialism"...

... and a majority voted for it.

Vermont voted in a socialist congressman.

Just this month, Norwegians decided to turn a good welfare state into an even better welfare state. They did this by electing socialists.

There are socialist parties all over the world, and they form governments and make policy.

Socialists don't seem too "dead in the water" these days.


Maybe you WISH they did...

[Maple]

32. You don't live in Venezuela

Or Norway.

The word 'socialism' is dead in the US. It carrys too much baggage.

[NorthernSpy]

39. what part of Venezuela is Vermont in?

The word 'socialism' is dead in the US. It carrys too much baggage.

Depends on where you are.

[Just Me]

21. Well, really, we are talking about securing human decency & dignity,...

,...in the interests of national welfare. :7

A nation will become weak if its people are abandoned because a nation IS its people.

[RepublicanElephant]

38. "christian democracy"...

...that'll play nicely in the south.

[patrice]

3. Yes indeed!

And isn't it "socialism" when the government, i.e. not "a free market", creates a whole class of jobs, such as war contractors, or, if it were to succeed, those who would manage our "privitized" Social Security?

[BlueEyedSon]

4. Car insurance is socialism, do they want to give that up too?

[xray s]

7. None of your examples are examples of socialism

This is the definition of socialism;

Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.

Roads, police and firefighters are not means of production. Neither is health insurance or schools for that matter. They are expenditures we make as a community for the common good, that improve the quality of our lives.

One of my biggest pet peeves is people allowing the Right to define these programs as "socialist", thereby giving them all kinds of unwarranted negative connotations.

Stop falling for their frame game.

[Maple]

10. Formal definitions

and the common understanding of them can be quite different.

Stand on points and lose...or change the word

[xray s]

14. that is exactly the trouble

Definitions have become meaningless. A propagandists dream come true. Orwell saw this coming.

You want to fight, you first have to define what you are fighting for. Let the other side make up the definitions, and you will never have a chance.

Rove 101.

[Maple]

23. Oh agreed

It's just that with that word 'socialism'...it's already too late to change the popular definition or image of it.

[xray s]

15. dupe sorry

[eallen]

19. Seems to me police and firefighters ARE means of production.

Police are the workers who produce the service of law enforcement. Firefighters are the workers who produce the service of fire abatement and emergency response. If you want to separate labor from other means of production, note that police and fire departments also include the material components for producing these services: cars, trucks, hoses, guns, radios, etc.

You're right that roads are the goods, not the means. Most states are wise to farm their actual production out to various private contractors.

[KingFlorez]

36. I'm not really defining them as socialist

I was giving examples of how the public must pay for some things and how that is done now without being thought of as socialist, but a necessity.

[eallen]

11. Yes, and one unfortunately.

There are reasons some things need to be publicly provided, for example, when it cannot exist apart from a public process (law enforcement), when it cannot be provided just to some (fire protection), when the direct customers are incapable of economic participation and the indirect customers are the public as a whole (education), etc.

I think the roads and their subsidy are a bad example, though, because there we have too much socialism. In essence, by paying for roads mostly through local property and sales tax, we publicly subsidize the use of automobiles over other forms of transportation, encourage sprawl, create urban environments where auto ownership is required, and force truly public services like police and schools to compete for the same tax dollar.

[mcctatas]

12. You pinko commie you...

of course socialism is necessary, perhaps now more than ever since many companies cannot (or will not) provide health care for their workers and job security in many sectors is becoming ever more tenuous. But alas and alack, as Maple so adroitly pointed out, the word is dead. So many people automatically think it's the first step on the dreaded road to communism (some actually think it's the same thing), and the people in power right now like that misconception just fine. If we only spent half as much on public social programs as we do on corporate welfare there wouldn't be third world rates of infant mortality in some southern states, seniors having to choose between medicine and food, and the working poor in the position of being too "rich" to qualify for federal education grants, but too poor to qualify for loans. Makes me want to scream!!!

[Igel]

16. Weren't those around long before any socialism was posited?

Under feudalism, for example?

Or will we revise such things to conform to 19th century European theory?

Perhaps we can just (re)define "socialism" to mean "any form of government" as opposed to "market economy", and so make socialism and capitalism perfectly compatible.

[applegrove]

17. Government monopoly does a better job in some cases. Some

cases not so much. But regulations are needed to keep anyone (corporaton, poor person, rich political donator) from breaking the law and turning society into a wild frenzy of predators.

[leftofthedial]

18. yep. about 95% socialism,

with about 5% heavily regulated capitalism for spice

would be ideal.

[dcfirefighter]

22. Land + Labor + Capital = Wealth

they want ~5% government control of the means of production (Land, Labor, and Capital). They don't want it all, that's too much liability.

Socialists want ~95% government control of the means of production.

I want 0% control of Labor, and ~0% control of capital (which is stored labor - man made implements of production, machines, buildings, processes, etc. - these things EMPLOY people in their creation).

I don't even want 100% government control of the Land, maybe 33%. But I do want 100% community sharing of the financial returns to Land.

Returns to Labor are Wages. The return to Capital is Interest. The return to Land is Rent.

You pay Rent to whomever has the land title. Sometimes you pay it all at once, and you pay a little more for what future increase may come. Sometimes you pay it a little at a time. But you always pay it. Divert that rent from private hands to the public purse, and share it. You haven't discouraged employment, or investment - Wages will increase, Interest will increase. Rent will be shared.

[dcfirefighter]

20. Yeah, else I'd be out of a job...

I'm libertarian at heart - a left libertarian, but a libertarian none the less. I feel that I pay a lot in taxes, and don't get a whole lot back. I'm single, no kids, in good health, I rent, I don't own much, etc.

However, as the level of government gets closer and closer to me, i become more socialist. I don't want much federal government: a small navy, a court system, pollution controls, a monetary system, standards & measures (more on the safety net in a moment) etc. I could be very happy with a $600B federal government.

At the state level, I want some disaster response coordination, (toll) roads, highways, trains, airports, ports, higher education, universal health care, state police, department of environmental quality, etc.

At the local level, I want police, firefighters, ems, parks, recreation, libraries, schools, community gardens, streets, TRANSIT, adult education, you name it. I want entrepreneurs to provide cafe's and shops, taverns and theaters, clinics and hospitals, clubs and restaraunts.

As for the social safety net: I want it. I want universal healthcare (market based swiss style, not canadian universal payer). I want a guaranteed minimum income (and not just for retirees). When I say I want a $600B government, I don't include these - because I don't want them paid out of TAXES. I want them paid out of user fees - fees for the use of natural resources, things no one created, and, as far as I am concerned, no one can own; they can only rent them from the rest of us.

Athens paid a dividend to it's free adult males from the profits of it's silver mines.
Alaska pays a dividend to it's citizens from the leases on it's oilfields.

If the US did that for it's oil fields, it's timbered forests, it's fishing grounds, it's waters, it's air (as a pollution sink), it's radio spectrum, it's mineral wealth, we'd raise billions. Throw in bank's money creation rights, the cost of the corporate liability shield, and value of patent rights after about 7 years from invention, and I'm quite sure we'd raise more than a Trillion dollars. That'd be $3,300 for each and every man, woman, and child in the country - more than $13,000 of guaranteed income for a family of four. Everyone would get it, it wouldn't be welfare, it'd be your share of the commonwealth.

If the states did that for the use of the lands within their borders - if owners had to pay a market rate user fee for the recognition of their property rights - we could quadruple that amount (less some, of course, for government services - services that would almost always raise the value of the property rights). Imagine that, if you put in a metro station, property values jump - and they jump more than the cost of the subway line, by several fold.

Take away the taxes against wages, income, building, employment, factories, etc, and we'd get all of these things in spades. The cost of employment would drop by ~30%, and the number of jobs would skyrocket. Working people would take home their full check. Employers would have to compete with higher wages and working conditions just to get people to work for them. The cost of owning a building would drop and our cities would be rebuilt. Housing prices would drop, allowing everyone a real chance at homeownership. Sprawl would slow, communities would become denser, transit would erupt. Families would have to work less to 'make it', and they'd commute a whole hell of a lot less. Street crime would nearly dissappear.

Concentrated wealth would disperse: much of it is in the form of land values, or corporate values, or bank values, or patent values, or ownership of broadcast licenses, or long term sub-market government land leases, or permissions to drill.

Those forms of wealth not associated with the above: buildings, factories, machinery, goodwill, and others are GOOD. They are the things that house us, and give us work. More importantly, those things are reproduceable: those things face competition. Those things have to play fair, or lose to the better product.

An up-start business could find a good location, workspace would be cheap, and people would have the money to be it's customers.

It's so easy, why don't you see?

[brazil]

28. dcfirefighter...

You're far too reasonable and intelligent for your own good.

Part of the problem is getting people to view the oil fields, forests, fishing grounds, radio spectrum, property rights (both intellectual and physical) as communal. Effectively, they belong to large corporations, because the people in government have basically given these communal assets away to their friends in corporations. The same people who complain that "taxes are theft" don't seem to recognize this as the theft of their assets.

I think part of the problem is breaking through the religion of free-market capitalism. So many people view the free-market as an ideal without ever really thinking through all its implications and looking at its history. A lot of the right-wingers even view it in a religious sense. "The free market will solve all our problems."

But historically, free markets are rare, and when they have existed, they've been brutal on the overwhelming majority of the population. With advances in technology, this will only get worse, as more and more jobs can be performed by machines. Those that won't will be outsourced. Capital is mobile, labor is not, because workers in one place are kept in their countries by restrictive immigration laws. Corporations, on the other hand, can move from the US to Bermuda with impunity, and then again to the UK if they decide that's a better place to be. This is hardly a level playing field.

[TwentyFive]

24. Socialism is dangerous....

I think Socialism is dangerous because it leads to the mentality that it's ok to take money from one group, and give it to another. Case in point: Bush rebuilding NOLA. He will spend $200 bil with NO tax increases. Amazing! People may feel good about all the compassion....but it is criminal to stick future generations with the bill.

Compassionate conservative....Kinder, gentler America....No child left behind. These are all scams that make people feel good, while letting somebody else foot the bill.


Clinton had it right. In 1993, he raised taxes, used the money to give poor people opportunities, and told everybody how we'd all benefit. He told the wealthy they should be glad to pay higher taxes...and Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and Donald Trump agreed with him!!! If the gov't is going to spend money, all citizens should share in the pain...that way, we care how the money is spent. Would Halliburton get away with their fraud if people knew it was THEIR MONEY going to this sham operation?

[Just Me]

25. Sounds like Mussolini's form of corporate socialism e.g. fascism.

Yup, socialism for the corporacrats, ONLY!

[dcfirefighter]

27. Yep

Keep building in the floodplain, and on the coast. Run your company into the ground, we'll bail you out. Loan millions with nothing down, FNMA will bail you out.

That's why it's important to look at the huge difference in economic rules surrounding man-made capital and natural capital.

Harness the returns to natural capital, split it up 300,000,000 ways, and let people go about their merry way, with the governments providing such common goods (police, streets, firefighters) as the people see fit.

[NorthernSpy]

29. it IS okay to take money from one group and give it to another!

That's what any society that gives a toss about its peace and security must do, or suffer the natural consequences of tolerating serious inequality. You don't think that all those affluent social democrats who founded Europe's welfare states were merely Ivory Tower bleeding hearts, do you? Actually, they were pragmatists; they saw what happens to societies that become severely unequal, and quite rationally decided that the guarantee of a decent life for all is simply what it costs to secure ones fortune.

Opportunity (diminshed though it is in today's America) is all well and good, but it is no substitute for actual equality. Unequal societies are unstable, and inevitably become dangerous to their citizens. We know that, and we're living it.

I've said it before: a society in which "anyone can get rich" just isn't enough. If everyone can't attain a secure, decent standard of living with ordinary effort, then the society as a whole is destined for failure.


And Clinton? The man wasted his presidency. In 1992, he was in a position to do enormous good, and he blew it by backpedalling on universal healthcare. He lost his momentum; all those people who'd let themselves take a chance on believing in the prospects for something better got disgusted and turned their backs; and two years later, it was all over but the crying. Delights such as NAFTA followed, and working class Americans lost ever more ground. Take a leaf from Clinton's book? I'd rather we didn't.

[bryant69]

30. At times perhaps

In those areas where there is no profit motive to do things - however the profit motive generall produces better and more efficient results in those areas where a profite cna be made.

Of course you need regulation and oversight as well.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[dcfirefighter]

37. Profits a great motivator

It builds factories, houses, and jobs.

But it doesn't work in the field of natural resources. You can profit by witholding land - keeping people out of homes and work. You can profit by dumping some of the costs of production into the environment, for everyone else to pay. You can profit by finagling sub-market access to oil or mineral wealth. You can profit by cornering the market on broadcast spectrum.

[Bouncy Ball]

31. Of course.

And one thing many reich wingers don't realize and won't admit to themselves is that we already have plenty of socialist programs in this country.

There's nothing wrong with it--it's been demonized and Americans have believed it without even wondering "hey, don't WE have some socialistic programs?"

Yep, critical thinking skills. We need more of that.

[bridgit]

33. yes, yes it is...

[LaPera]

34. So why do so many corporations use these services, yet pay no taxes?

And they still use the military and corporate socialism...SUBSIDES!

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

35. In my opinion, the key is in the fine-tuning

between government and private control over society. Some government control over such things as to what drugs a private company can sell the public, what amount of pollution a private company can spread, what regulations over doctors and lawyers can be imposed and the licensing of various professionals in general, what anti-competitive monopolies can be allowed, what amount of education parents should be required to subject their children to, for example, is necessary. Some industries like energy and health care do not lend themselves as well to market forces as others. Socialism as I see it isn't totalitarian. It doesn't necessarily involve full government control over society and the means to production, but perhaps greater involvement in certain areas. Something we don't have much of in the United States is something called a "regie" (such as in France, for example). A "regie", like the auto maker Renault is a government-owned company that has to make a profit on its own. In California, the most successful worker's compensation insurance company is a "regie", State Compensation Insurance Fund. It was started with government funding from the State of California but it has to survive by itself, earning its own way. I don't think it issues stock and it has to be competitive with purely private companies in the same field.

[xchrom]

40. all western societies are ''socialist'' to one degree or another.

the current problem we have is that the americans have suddenly invited those who control the means of production and the land and the wages to make the rules for the economy and the tax expenditures{taxes being the main stay for government control of the economy}.

there needs to be shift in thinking about who sits at the table to make rules for who.

if we continue to believe that corporations exist primarily to benefit ''shareholders'' only -- we continue wandering in the wilderness.

adam smith points out that when capitalists get together -- the first thing they do is start talking about the cost of things -- energizing immediate control of the few over the many.
even is by accident.