The Most Socialist States in America

[EV_Ares]

When the Democratic Party took over the presidency and both houses of Congress in 2008, conservatives were quick to warn their supporters of a coming era of socialism led by President Barack Obama.

Indeed, that message was a constant in the debate over the health care reform bill as well as the Congressional midterm elections, when Tea Party conservatives made taxation a rallying cry for frustrated Americans.

As the narrative of the country’s purported move toward socialism persists, MainStreet decided to evaluate which states were the most and least socialist, to get a picture of how diverse the country is in how states manage their finances.

What is 'Socialist,' Anyway?

To evaluate the degree to which different states manifest socialist principles, we started from the core definition of socialism as a form of government in which the state owns the means of production and allocates resources to its citizens at its discretion.

In other words, a purely socialist state is one in which the state is responsible for 100% of economic output and spends all of it on social programs.

entire article @ following link: http://www.cnbc.com/id/40382949

[LiberalArkie]

1. Go Hogs

[CrownPrinceBandar]

2. Go Socialist Mountaineers!.......

Welcome y'all comrades!

"1. West Virginia

Gross Domestic Product (2009): $63,344,000,000

Total State Expenditures (FY 2009): $20,362,000,000

Expenditures as Proportion of GDP: 32.1%

Despite the fact that Republicans won two out of three House seats in the 2010 midterm elections, West Virginia has been a Democratic state for most of its existence.

In fact, Congress’s longest-serving member ever was Robert Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat who, at the time of his death last year, had represented the state for 57 years.

On the state level, four of the past five governors have come from the Democratic Party, which could explain how the state’s expenditures have come to account for 32.1% of total output."

[Radical Activist]

6. It does not follow to call it socialist.

State spending is such a large portion of their GDP because their tiny economy is based on the coal industry. The coal industry is pretty good about keeping mining regions poor and driving out other job opportunities.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

3. #3 Alabama

Spin that.

[randr]

4. What is it about this that the dems can not

wrap their arguments around?

[Radical Activist]

5. Alaska.

What's more socialist than taking revenues from natural resource extraction and giving checks to all residents?

That being said, there are different forms of socialism. I don't support the form of state-socialism as defined in the article, which is one reason why I often disagree with the authoritarians at DU.

[alfredo]

7. Social Democrat?

[Radical Activist]

10. I wouldn't call myself that.

I believe all publicly traded corporations should be majority owned and governed by its employees directly, without the big brother re-engineering of society by the state. I don't conflate the state owning the means of production with the workers owning the means of production. I also view a welfare state as an inadequate substitute for the more just distribution of wealth that would result if employees owned a share of their company and shared in the profits beyond their wage.

That's not the direction I see Social Democrat parties going, but I guess I would fit in well enough with those parties in some countries. I don't know if there's a name or party for post-left, non-revolutionary, democratic, anarcho-communism along the community organizing model.

[alfredo]

11. We are the state and we need to start acting like that.

[Radical Activist]

14. Were we the state when Bush invaded Iraq and started torturing people?

I would say yes to a degree. All Americans share some part of the blame for what our government did in our name. The reality is that too much centralized power will always be abused, whether its by a corporate CEO or a communist dictator.

[alfredo]

15. I agree. The word citizenship might apply.

[FrancisTreptoe]

8. Not a fan of this study..

Who cares which state is most "socialist". Anyways they should have listed the states with the most spending toward social programs, not total spending.

[Odin2005]

9. CNBC is completey ignorant about what "socialism" means.

Socialism is when THE WORKERS control the means of production. Keep pushing that "socialism = government control over you" BS, idiots! :eyes:

[alfredo]

12. Accuracy about the nature of Socialism doesn't fit their agenda.

[Hannah Bell]

13. +100

[jmowreader]

16. Let's go at it in a different fashion

Socialism is state ownership of the means of production--and that is ALL socialism is. Since the only "means of production" the state owns is prison industry, the most socialist states are, by necessity, the states with the largest prison populations.

Therefore! The 10 most socialist states in America according to http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/Prison_Count_2010.pdf must be:

Texas: 171,249 inmates
California: 169,413 inmates
Florida: 103,915 inmates
New York: 58,648 inmates
Georgia: 53,562 inmates
Ohio: 51,606 inmates
Pennsylvania: 51,429 inmates
Michigan: 45,478 inmates
Illinois: 45,161 inmates
Arizona: 40,523 inmates

If you want to put "states receiving the most federal assistance" as your guideline, Huffington Post says these are:

1. Washington, DC
2. Vermont
3. Alaska
4. New York
5. Massachusetts
6. Louisiana
7. Tennessee
8. Maine
9: New Mexico
10: Mississippi

Incidentally, a purely socialist state spends most of its money on REMAINING a socialist state: the eight members of the Warsaw Pact spent far more money on their militaries and secret police apparatuses than they ever did on what we'd call "social spending." (There is one exception here: Romania spent more money enforcing Decree 770, which banned abortions and birth control for anyone except women over 45 with at least four children, than they did on anything else.)