Hey kids: Don't be a sucker for socialism

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B.S, for one it's communism where everyone is financially equal, People make different wages in socialism...also from what I understand people in current socialist democracies can use a computer and smart phone. Socialism simply attempts to minimize the divide between the wealthy and the poor not make it so everyone has the exact same resources. Authoratarian socialism can exist, but currently most socialist countries have Democratic Socialism which ensures rights and liberty for the citizens.

Also plain capitalism wouldn't give you a good opportunity to have nice things, and a place to live...even a normal lifespan wouldn't be guaranteed. You'd be just as likely to be working the grind 12 hours a day 6-7 days a week, get maimed on the job, due to lack of safety regulations or proper safety gear. Then the employer would toss you aside like garbage with no obligation to provide compensation to pay for medical care...till finally you're homeless on the streets with a missing hand or leg or improperly healed wound due to having made crap wages that you couldn't afford the hospital with and being forever seen as not-hirable, and there would be no resources to help you. The only reason that isn't quite so likely is because of socialist features that were added into our system, it provides protections to the individual that capitalism doesn't.

I for one am against socialism. I am against anything except capitalism. I want to live in a society where my hard work pars off, a meritocratic society. You work hard, you get money. Why should there be a cap on how rich one can be? They have got there through sheer hard work. I'm not generalising all poor people, but a fair amount of people are poor because they simply did not work as hard as they could. I'm not from a rich background, I am a working class person, my parents don't have well paid jobs and they openly admit that they hardly worked at school and as such got poor qualifications and poor jobs. If they had worked really hard they could have got good jobs and I could have been sat in an 11 bedroom mansion right now. I have an incentive that I can escape this if I work hard, I could become a millionaire, which is even less achievable in a non-capitalist society. Capitalism doesn't work against the poor, if anything it helps them because there is the incentive to work hard and then get a good job to earn a lot of money. Some of them do and prosper, for instance Alan Sugar.

Then why are there so many working poor who work hard and remain poor? Getting a better job isn't always a possibility as you have to eat, pay rent and things like that not everyone can afford to be so picky about jobs. Many of the poor are already working hard and there is no obvious pay off in sight except the hopes they might find a better pay job with more flexible hours and leisure time...but they gotta keep working hard just to barely make ends meet.

Also there is the segment of poor, who are poor because they are on SSI/disibility due to inability to be employed...if we had capitalism with no socialist features whatsoever that the disabled would me much worse off.

Sometimes it's too late, you can't just suddenly start working hard and expect everything. You have to start early ie in school. Also, oftentimes they may follow immediate gratification as opposed to deferred gratification, which also works against them. The government have also cut benefits a lot which is really bad, as often people need some money as a kick-start.

Socialism is a dirty word in America, because Socialists want to take away your freedoms.

Socialists aren't as bad as Nazi and pedophiles, but very close.

They closely resemble "pick pocket" thieves, so I call them "pick pockets".

Fundamental to a "pick pocket's" ideology is the arrogant belief that he can spend your heard earned money better than you.

So, naturally, the "pick pocket" proposes large tax increases.

However, things just don't go according to plan, and low-and-behold the "pick pocket" is back for more and more of your money ...

So, yeah, let's not be suckers for "pick pockets".

It is pointless to have a black and white discussion about socialism and capitalism as it pertains to this country because we have a mixture of both and , the US is just as socialist as most European countries but the redistribution is corrupted and directed to the top in order to preserve the big profits(but not the jobs) of the mega-donors and special interests. I don't care so much about the theoretical arguments anymore as it really is just pointless pissing contest.

Do I think the US should nationalize the healthcare industry? No, that couldn't work unless you building from the ground level up and unless you plan on crashing the economy it is an impossibility at this moment. Does that mean that the government can't have a 'public option'? No, the worry is that a public option would eventually become the only option as no one can compete against the government but I don't really buy that with the quality and incompetence of most things our government does.

Is infrastructure socialism? Only if you subscribed to most extremist strain of anarcho-capitalism, while private roads and bridges and such are possible we as a country decided against that a long long time ago. I think there can be a lot more public-private partnerships but even then you have to keep up with the rest of the world especially when we're the richest country in the world. We may be the richest but are you individually the wealthiest in the world? No, not even close and have many many societal problems. Our bridges are crumbling, a roads are terrible, it is a ticking time bomb if we don't address this and I thought that was the whole point of Obama's stimulus package but the reality was that it was a massive payoff to the special interests that helped him get elected. There are like 60,000 bridges in this country are structurally deficient, for the country that invented the internet we have some of the slowest in the developed world I am led to believe.

Welfare is a touchy subject and it would be easier to address or not be near the same amount of issue if we brought jobs back to this country because I do not believe people want to sit around and do nothing. Now it has to be worth their time and there is this idea that if we provide even the bare bones of survival to these people that they won't be motivated to get a job but that makes perfect sense if you are literally losing money by working. If there were jobs that paid a living wage then there wouldn't be people choosing to stay on welfare rather than to work a terrible job under terrible conditions with no benefits that ends up costing them money. I've thought about this a lot in the last year, automation is going to happen and it is going to put most of the American workforce out of work very quickly as technology advances far faster than society does and we're not ready for it.

I've come to support a universal basic income which to some people would sound like straight up communism but what people don't understand is that direct-redistribution is far preferable that having a mammoth government entities as middlemen, that is where the money is being swallowed up. 70% of people might be out of work and now the elites such someone like Henry Kissinger would call us 'useless eaters' which really cuts to what the 1% really thinks about us. Either the wealth is shared or we may need some guillotines in the not so distant future. We'd actually end up probably saving money doing this and direct redistribution would have stronger market mechanism than our current system and while I agree social services really isn't something you can turn a fat profit on or at least you shouldn't, more choice and competition drives down prices and increases innovation which I think would really a lot people like ourselves on the spectrum who have so few choices.

Now I have the radical idea that we could do something similar with public education, it doesn't mean we get rid of but we should have an option. I was told my time thru school(one of the worst public school districts in the country) that they spent like $30,000 per student which is like the tuition to an elite private university so why we can't we make the decision we want to educate our children? The government can provide funding and run their own schools but this people choice and create competition which again lowers prices and drives innovation. That's still public education but public education not beholden to teachers unions who care far more about themselves and their cushy jobs than they do children which why they stand in the way every bit at any hint of reform. Now this may be considered direct distribution but nobody could consider it communism because I'm pretty sure one of their planks is government-run public education. How can these private schools operate so much better with much less money? I guess it is a different clientele but how does just simply throwing money at the teachers and schools that rectifying that with fixing public education when it clearly isn't(at least totally) a money issue

More people are poor because there aren't jobs with good wages to be had, and have to settle for less. Working hard by itself doesn't do anything if you're making barely enough to live and cover bills. It seems capitalism is opposed to having a comfortable lifestyle throughout life.....and prefers to just allow the possibility of that sometime in the future after you've spent the prime of your life at work working as hard as you can.

How are you going to become a millionaire by making average wages, sort of hard to save up that kind of money if you have to cover basic expenses and bills with less than ideal wages since you need the money to sustain yourself. You think if you just work and work and work you're going to get rich just because you 'deserve' it. Do you have a good job now...or prospective opportunities to move up to a better job or have you saved up to start your own buisiness?

It's survival of the financially fittest in this country, helps if you start out above lower class. At best you should expect maybe someday you'll be able to afford to buy a house wont likely be your dream house but it will be yours. Till then you'll probably have to live with room-mates or family to split rent/utilities and be living from pay-check to pay check like a good majority of the rest of us in this country...forget the millionaire thing unless you win the lottery or something.

If too many people are able to become millionaires, there will be less to go around for already existing millionaires they'll have less money to throw around...how can you really believe its set up so 'anyone' can become vastly rich through good old fashioned hard work? Corporations and their wealthy C.E.Os have far, far too much power....and it would be even worse if we had pure unadulterated capitalism.

1) I'm not in America.
2) We have plenty of good things eg the NHS.
3) I will fulfil my dreams through determination.
4) I'm not old enough to get a full time job
5) Socialism does not allow for meritocracy, it just encourages people to be lazy, capitalism encourages work.

Yes I mean clearly the point of life is to work for someone to make more money off of you working than you make working. In fact the term person needs to be minimized, you are a worker and nothing more, that is your life, your interests and your all encompassing goal work and only work, no leisure...s**t, Work, Eat, Sleep! s**t, Work, Eat, Sleep!

Of course you can't just suddenly start working hard and expect everything. You also can't just expect that hard work will grant everything, in fact don't count on it granting much of anything. Its not as simple as working harder brings more money a lot of difficult/exerting physical work doesn't pay the greatest...some jobs that don't involve labor pay more.

I mean how can a person honestly tell a full time laborer that does 'hard' work yet falls in the working poor category, that the reason they are poor is they aren't working hard enough. That is essentially what the 'poor people don't work hard enough' sentiment is doing.

Too much hard work on a consistent basis is bad for ones health, leisure time is actually an important part of keeping people healthy physically and mentally. Something our system allows employers to just outright ignore.

Last edited by Sweetleaf on 21 May 2016, 1:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Being a bit aggressive aren't you?

I was being sarcastic, that is not what I actually think.

According to Americans you live in a socialist country. You have the NHS. American conservatives would prefer people who can't afford treatment for health ailments and disabilities become homeless and wallow on the streets until they either kill themselves or starve. That is what "pure capitalism" means.

Capitalism drives down prices through a process we call competition. It creates wealth and superior innovation by harnessing an inherent human trait we call incentive. Empirical evidence supports this. Socialism conversely, extinguishes this characteristic by confusing it with greed.

In the 1980’s into the 90’s American wealth and technical innovation were thriving. Compare this to what was occurring in the USSR at the same time, collapsing under the weight of it’s own bloated bureaucracy, while having borders that were virtually impenetrable. How could a socialist welfare state possibly co-exist in America with our porous border? A problem which only one candidate seems willing to reconcile, yet he is denounced as racist for doing so.

Also, claiming that socialism works for Scandinavian countries cannot be considered a germane comparison, as America has even more illegal aliens than these “model” countries have citizens.

Exactly. ^^^

Also, I'm glad I left myyearbook...