Where is the line between social programs and socialism for you?

Question

Many people keep saying socialism has existed for a long time in the USA. They point to municipal services, like water and sewerage. I can only assume these people live in a house or apartment where someone else pays the water bill. All municipal services come with a user fee. You pay a user fee at the gas pumps in the form of federal gas tax to use the highway system. Even Social Security has to be bought into.
Then there's education. The public school system is designed to provide equal opportunity, not equal outcome. It too is funded by the community, not the federal government.
So where is the socialism that has been here for years. Where are the federal programs that are funded to provide equal outcome, not equal opportunity?

Answer 1

People who compare municipal service with socialism don't have a firm grasp of socialism. That may be why they support it with such zeal............

Really any social program could be considered a socialist program (in the broadest sense of the term) but they aren't all bad. We need to make sure that people are as unreliant on the government for their support as possible...........

Answer 2

Government ownership or control of the means of production is where true socialism begins.

I agree, the people who rag about the US becoming a socialist nation deny or are unaware of certain facts.

--The public school system benefits capitalism by providing universal education and a productive, educated workforce.

--Capitalism didn't provide a social safety net for retirees; up to 70% of the elderly lived below the poverty line before Social Security.

--The bottom line orientation of capitalism also didn't provide electrification to the rural south. And, there are many other examples of where pure capitalism did not and will not provide needed services.

Informed citizens and political leaders figured this out during the progressive era. It's no accident that we're having this retro debate now. These thoughts have their origins in Karl Rove's admiration for the robber baron days which preceded these all the reforms. We forget that the reforms made America great..

Answer 3

Stop and think, Government contracts, remove them from society what happens, poverty why, there are no corporation to get this money to give jobs. Lets just name a few federal contracts, Shipbuilding, Avionics, surveillance, bus services like the one used for Katrina.
Now lets see other Federal programs, FBI, CIA, ICE, Military, Postal Service, Public schools, community Colleges , now these dole out plenty of Federal Contracts also.
Socialism is not free, it uses every able body in the work force
Socialism is not welfare, it not give me everything with out doing nothing, it means I have a job and if that job plays out, and I can't find one fast, I still have a place to live, health care and food allowance until a job is found. So we are Socialist just not ruled by a dictator.

Answer 4

Socialism doesn't mean free. Maybe that's where you're confused. In the case of the municipal water systems, socialism means that we all own the municipal water systems. They are publicly owned. We are the public. But they have to be funded in order to operate.
In the case of socialized medicine, we would all own the health care system, but they would still have to be funded. Many believe that it would be far better to eliminate all of the dead weight in the health care system, by eliminating the insurance companies and replacing them with a single payer. The single payer would have to be the Federal government and the system would have to be funded through some form of taxation.

Answer 5

HA HA, You misspelled, "Finite perspective with just a touch of predisposition."

The line is between labor and management. Minimum Wage, Labor Unions, Trade Guilds, Churches...these are all forms of socialistic behavior.

In the perfect world, each person would be paid the exact value of their labors. In the Capitalist world, piece-work payment would cripple the inept mass at the upper end of our class structure because their income is the margin between what labor is worth and how little they can pay for it.

In Marx's twisted mind, the government has the obligation to enforce universal equity. Pure Socialism never really existed...just as pure Capitalism never has. Welfare alone attests to this.

For me, I believe every person should have to work and every person should have vacations. I know many people who never had one or the other.

Who should our government cater to; people who never worked or people who never took a vacation?

To me, the world is upside down.

Who was that Guy who piled all the gunpowder under Parliament?

Answer 6

the guy earnings taxes at the instant are not the super deal. basically 20% of tax gross sales comes from own earnings, it is organization taxes that are going to skyrocket decrease than Obama. For a million. 4% is a heck of a brilliant form of money it is the genuinely annual boost fee in usa. So maximum human beings can kiss their boost see you later next year by way of fact it is going to Obama and Fedzilla. yet it is not the element. it is taxation of a particular demographic to grant to different demographics by way of federally funneled wellfare classes be they medicaid, wellfare, nutrition banks, and prescription drug classes for the undesirable. it is the ideology. besides McCain has proposed 25% tax costs yet he won't be able to get everywhere close to that without Fedzilla giving up a number of it is classes. It has no longer something to do with 39 and 35 it is going to truly be 35 and 50 in case you have been doing all your homework you will possibly understand that organization gross sales would be taxed at a cost of fifty cents on the greenback. perhaps it is no longer proper to you considering which you're an worker who takes no possession of their organization yet while your business organization gets hit that difficult you will see and for what? Gold plated medicaid classes for able bodied human beings? in the event that they weren't able bodied they may well be on incapacity coverage! You dug up a pair dumb numbers on the internet and attempt to make it approximately 4% i think of the treatment for socialism is going to be 4 years with Barack Obama. Socialism styled classes have failed in each and every occasion in usa and around the realm. all human beings factors to Europe and their healthcare gadget. final time I checked Europe had terrible poverty, terrible unemployment and socialism by no skill supplies. perhaps 4 years decrease than this fool will snap indoctrinated college scholars and professors out of their self-righteous little bubble while they experience the soreness of socialism and we are able to get decrease back to American concepts lower back.

Answer 7

The line is this: social programs, like the ones you mentioned, help improve socio-economic mobility. They level the playing field. They give people opportunities to become more productive despite the social situation they were born into.

Socialism is about the masses' relationship to the means of production. Social programs don't address this.

Answer 8

Socialism is total government control of most industry, and policies that are more geared towards equalization of wealth than personal freedom to make money and get rich.

A well functioning successful and productive society economically cannot be all socialist nor can it be purely capitalistic.
The best system is free enterprise with social programs included. why? because balance is a good thing....while extremism is not good thing.

Answer 9

Socialism on the brain syndrome. This is a term slung by politics to cause unrest. Socialism-police,fire,garbage etc.

Answer 10

When the government takes my money (taxes) and spends it to buy clean needles for junkies.

When the government takes my money (taxes) and spends it to support a lazy bum in the projects who won’t get a job.

12) Nationalized Health

a) "Socialism guides our behavior...In practice, we keep moving down the Socialist road...In fact, we are more than half Socialist today, that is, more than half the total output of the country is being distributed in a way that is determined by the government (including regulations)...Bill Clinton is a Socialist, defined as somebody who believes that the way to achieve good things is to have government do it. You can't think of a more Socialist program than the health care program that he tried to get us to adopt." Milton Friedman, (C-Span), November 20, 1994, in Dennis L. Cuddy, The Road to Socialism and the New World Order, p. 74.

b) "It must count among the most amazing spectacles of history to be inundated with the rhetoric, theory, and practice of communism, and see not one communist around. We read and hear daily about class warfare, redistribution of wealth, the 'dispossessed' masses, the disadvantaged, universal health care, speech codes, sensitivity training, restrictions on parents' rights, school-to-work-the list goes on and on. The agenda is with us, the [Communist] Party is not." Balint Vazsonyi, America's 30 Years War, p. 176, 7.


a) "Marxism flourishes in the ideology and politics of present-day multiculturalism. Some multiculturalist advocates, including many well-meaning teachers and school administrators, are not aware of the leftist (Marxist) concepts and assumptions operative in multiculturalism. Unwittingly, they often give aid and comfort to a radical leftist philosophy. If the unsuspecting advocates of multiculturalist practices were aware of the Marxist threads in the fabric of multiculturalism, they would be a lot less eager to advance its principles and policies." Alvin J. Schmidt, The Menace of Multiculturalism, p. 25.


4) Democratic Socialists of America

a) Major players (per letterhead and publications): Bogdan Denitch, Barbara Ehrenreich, Dolores Huerta, Mildred Jeffrey, Gloria Steinem, Cornel West, James B. Chapin, Rep. Ronald V. Dellums, James Farmer, Dorothy Healey, Jose LaLuz, Hilda Mason, Steve Max, Harold Meyerson, Frances Fox Piven, Rosemary Ruether, Edwin Vargas Jr., Michael Harrington, John Sweeny, Michael Eric Dyson, and Edward Asner.

b) "We are socialists because we share a vision of a humane international social order based on equitable distribution of resources, meaningful work, a healthy environment, sustainable growth, gender and racial equality, and non-oppressive relationships." Building the Next Left: The Political Perspective of the Democratic Socialists of America, p. 1.