Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Finance, the economy & Economics The Debate: Is America’s future capitalist or socialist?

How come Bernie doesn't get Never Trumpers?

It's the Soviet Union, the Cold War, Cuba, Venezuela...Boomers can't get past that, especially early Boomers who were old enough to know what was going on when it was going on. Communism. The Red Scare. McCarthyism. Stalin and WW2...Marxist dictators destroyed Marxism but folks in the know, know that if there is a dictator involved it cannot be Marxism. But the indoctrination is in place and cannot be over-ridden with facts and truth.

But all that is fading from memory and a new model has arisen. A successful model. A model for future socialists to work towards. We may have lost a battle here but the war is far from over.

I think you guys are confusing socialism with social services. I find it very odd. You seem determined to socialize the united states. It think the confusion is your constant insistence on "socialism" word and deed. I consider the whole thing a waste of time. The United States will continue to offer social services of one kind or another along with a market economy. That is not going to change at all. The reason, incidentally, that the Scandinavians are more successful at it than we are is that their populace actually trusts their government and their government returns the favor. The United States has an ongoing battle with itself and government. I don't trust my government because it doesn't deserve my trust. We are fighting a war that has lasted almost 20 years and the why of it escapes me and everybody else (costs, last time I looked, 4 billion a month) The FBI, for instance (and as far as I know) continues to troll cell phone waves for EVERYTHING! In the last 5 years we have built an absolutely huge memory sump in, I think, Utah. Nobody knows why. Mysteries and Gov and pals and we are clueless. Our government spends billions 'helping' other countries whilst slaughtering their citizens. Our healthcare is terrifying and responsible for most of our bankruptcies and bankruptcy itself no longer covers debt to Gov or Banks which means, basically, that debt is forever no matter what. I can go on and on about this.

I think THIS is the real question because things are not going to get any better until the relation between gov and citizens is worked out. Our answer actually seems to elect politicians who live off mutual disgust. This is, to my mind, lunacy but we keep on electing these jackasses. We seem to dote on kind of crap. BOTH sides need to calm down, stop the rhetoric, and figure this out before we melt down.

There's a root word in there somewhere.
Sorry, you cannot adequately deny the fact that social services paid for by taxes is a form of socialism.
No country has ever successfully made 100 percent of all goods and services "social", just as no country has ever made everything 100 percent private sector either.
But on several occasions in history, a good many countries HAVE indeed attempted to make most goods and services privatized or socialized.

Anytime the pendulum swings too far in either direction, the mechanism fails on a multitude of levels.
But the continuum is undeniable, socialized on one end, privatized on the other.
And social services paid for by taxes are a form of socialism, and whether it is mild or total is not the question.
The question is what fits the definition of socialized or privatized.

As I stated earlier, socialism is like music or wine...there is no single type, style or implementation. Every country, every society, tries their hand at some mix of both to some extent.
The extent to which authoritarians attempt to dictate the process determines how democratic it is. Authoritarian state socialism isn't generally very democratic. Authoritarianism is also not always very capitalistic either.
At some point, if nearly all risk and overhead is socialized but all profit is privatized, it is very difficult to classify that as "capitalism" anymore.

And absent our Constitution, there is nothing else that requires our nation to socialize anything. It is entirely possible to privatize nearly everything, the water, roads, schools, fire departments, even law enforcement and the military. The list of things that can be and/or have been privatized is nearly endless.
And again, absent the Constitution, nothing else exists to prevent that from happening.

Erik Prince was floating the notion of privatizing the Afghanistan War recently.

Some cities are dipping their toe in the waters of privatized law enforcement.

Many states have privatized some or all of their corrections systems, and privatized detention centers for unauthorized and illegal aliens, and privatized mental health has existed ever since Reagan defunded federal help and oversight for most state mental health programs.

Robocop was not a story about a mechanical policeman, it was the story of what might happen if a corporation is handed the responsibility of enforcing the law while simultaneously dealing with the conflicting demands of stockholders to make large profits.

So you see, almost anything and everything can be privatized, just as many things can be socialized. And if the latter, then it is socialism.

We are only arguing matters of degree and methodology.

This socialist thing is a waste of time. I am done with it. Have a nice day!

No, you are. Progressives want social services and are called socialists for it.

Social democracy is a Democratic capitalist system(like ours) with social programs in place to be sure that no one is left behind. Only Americans even call it socialism. And only Americans confuse it with the Soviet model.

And try as we might we cannot convince you that all we want is social services like other countries have.

I asked you to exlore how it's been done elsewhere but you keep pointing to Russia and plugging your ears. While I point at the Scandinavian model and scream at you.

Don't run off you old fool! Who else would I argue with? And I'm sure if I keep preaching, you will one day see the light.

Were not socialists were social-services-ists. Say that three times fast and see how many votes it gets you.

The Scandinavians themselves have denied being socialist. I have even posted a link to that. For some strange reason you re going to defend the word "socialism" to the bitter end.

Again, this is silly, combative, a waste of time, and senseless.

This is my last on this one. You can win, I have no problem because I have no idea what you are talking about. Incidentally, social services are those services supplied by gov to tax payers. Socialism is a national policy of controlling means of production. I know, you disagree - fine.

Have a nice day!

It really is about Republicans calling Bernie a commie, when all he wants is for us to be more like Norway, which is NOT Socialist by their or anybody's definition. This is Republican fear-baiting, nothing more. It's The Big Lie. Tell it enough for years, and some people will start to believe it. They certainly did that to Hillary.

Once they began calling Obama and his policies "socialist", you would think most people would laugh and ridicule them, but they packed many millions of dollars behind their messaging, to make sure that it would stick.

I keep saying that when people or groups spend that kind of money, they expect to get some results.
Well, we are now living with the results: Trump, and a level of red-baiting that almost makes the 1950's look tame by comparison.

Bernie's mistake was insisting that he could simultaneously "educate the masses" that democratic socialism was a benign thing, a restoration of the New Deal and cancelling the worst excesses of Reaganomics and Trickle Down...AND float mass appeal and electability all at the same time.

As many have said, the public as it is today, is conditioned to think in blunt sound bites and they arrive at conclusions based on overly simplistic tribal shibboleths.

The conditioning has been so successful that Trump actually said in a Fox News Town Hall that "politicians have to be civil."

Imagine Trump asking for civility.
Imagine the kind of psycho-linguistic engineering it takes to make a sizable portion of the electorate "buy" a Donald Trump plea for "civility".

Now you know where all the money went.

That's because they're NOT FECKING SOCIALISTS AND NOBODY BUT YOU EVER SAID THEY WERE!!!!!

Jesus fecking christ do you ever read anything that anyone writes?

Social democracy is not socialism, how many times over the years have I said this?

You are squabbling over a word that no one but you is even using.

Once, a long long time ago Bernie Sanders said he was a democratic socialist. Which is not the same thing as socialist because it has that democratic word in front of it but you will not be swayed....

The Scandinavian Model, all the while, continues to thrive and prosper! And our system looks like a clown car.

They have legislated living wages. They have national health care. They have education/childcare from nursery to college. They have family leave and paid time off. The system creates a lot of millionaires, a lot of happy workers and craftsmen, and a healthy successful society...but not many billionaires...and no one goes hungry.

But we can't have nice things like that because Russia and Venezuela...?