If you read the writings of our founding fathers, you will discover that the real definition of Americanism, doesn't contain a single, spirit robing ounce of anything that could be interpreted as socialism.

The truth is that much of the poverty that exists in America has been caused by failed socialist experiments and policies.

Handouts simply rob the individual of their incentive to work and strive to improve their lot in life. It is the responsibility of individuals, families, churches and local communities to "take care" of themselves. Anytime you turn over responsibility for any portion of your life to "Government", you also turn over some of your freedom.

Many of the victims of this disaster have been poor for generations, because failed socialist programs like welfare have removed any incentive for them to perform or succeed. These liberal, spirit robbing "entitlements" have produced entire generations of individuals in certain communities who feel like they are owed something by the rest of society.

These same failed socialist experiments have magnified the exact suffering they were supposed to eliminate and they have produced people who are as dependant on governmental handouts as addicts are dependant on drugs.

Eric

My dictionary defines "censure" as: "strong or vehement expression of disapproval." When, in fact, I implicitly acknowledged that a European perspective, may have a legitimately different take. In no way did I "censure" your comments...and I do not wish to censor them, either.

I happen to think we must listen to those we most vehemently disagree with. Gandhi, and Martin Luther King are my models for this. And of course, Jesus.

It frustrates me to know end to see the arrogance of some of our leaders. But C'mon, our present regime is certainly no more imperious than DeGaulle, or Chamberlain, or Victoria for that matter.

In a Democracy, the folks get the leaders they deserve.

This is often quite true. But that kind of generalization seems to be precisely the sort of thinking that we Yanks are (often correctly) accused of.

And there is a vigorous debate in this country over those "entrenched" beliefs. As there should be.

Without capitalists, socialist would have no wealth to "redistribute".

Eric

Very good point, Eric.

Lisa

socialist systems where emplyers are forced to pay more to have a worker than the worker is really worth. Do one thing and one thing only. They ensure fewer jobs than there would be without those rules.

Takeing the the houscleaners example. if the people who had your sister clean their house had to chip in for medical and other benifits. the first thing that would happen is fewer people would be willing to hire someone to clean their house. the second thing that would happen is those that do get hired wouldn't be allowed to work enough to get to the point where they had to be paid. the third is with more people without housecleaning jobs . those that do get hired would be paid less .

so the benifit of makeing makeing businesses have to pay people more provide people more benifits . trying to forcibly help out these house cleaners . in the real world .. manages to harm them bye causeing fewer jobs ,lower wages, and fewer hours to work .

this is how it happens in any section of the workforce.

this is why companies outsourse work over sees or to independent contractors . less papper work fewer taxes .

to keep an employee makeing 30,000 a year a company easily pays outs 34-37,000 to appease the government taxes and such . then there is all the other costs that go along with having employees .. the liability insurance the office space .

so socializing the system and making companies pay more and more. Only gets more companies outsoursing . more companies using fewer people .

It all works out in the end to be a bad thing when the government gets more and more involved

Ken

I won't say much about the subject because A. It's not constructive and B. It's not constructive... but...

- In an "Individualist" society
- In a society with dwindling social cohesion
- In a society where Churces use funds to pay off child molestation victims with hundreds of millions of dollars...

There really *should* be a safety net for some people. Who? Old people, handicapped people, orphans and other people that genuinely can't fend for themselves need to be taken care of.

One old man died outside the Convention Center on the streets of New Orleans... and next to him was a deceased old woman in a wheel chair, covered with a blanket who both didn't make it out of the city (but obviously tried).

People are not even burying the dead as their bodies lay open on the street... and we're not talking help but "fending for themselves" and entrepreneurial attitude?

Like Jane said, not everyone is a healthy, 25 year old white male.

Signing off.
Erik

P.s. What IS constructive? Let's all write a promotion today that makes us some money and donate the profits to relief.

Having looked up "socialism" in the dictionary, and finding that the definition is state ownership of companies etc., I have to reframe everything I've said.

What I mean is "social responsibility". Some of that involves state control and ownership, and some of it involves the state being involved in creating an equitable society.

For the record, the way communism was implemented was simply another form of elitism. That said, I know people who have suffered very badly under "capitalism" and were much better off under communism. My cleaner, for example, was a well respected nurse in Bulgaria. Since the collapse of communism she became a clerk at the Town Hall, and when that job went "poof", she came to the UK and now works cleaning. She's in her 50s and desperately trying to get some money together for retirement.

Some things just shouldn't be left in the hands of the private sector (i.e. people who's main motivation is profit). The railways are a good example. It's insane to have privatised railways, and since they were privatised here it's been one incident after another, largely because the left arm doesn't know what the right arm is doing and there are far too many companies involved. We've had a spate of fatal rail accidents, most of which seem to be down to faulty maintenance caused by the chaos of having over 150 companies involved in maintenance etc.

The point is this. Human nature dictates that some people will succeed in gaining access to far more resource than they need, whilst others (for whatever myriad reasons) will suffer a dearth of resources. With no checks and balances, this leads to a polarised society. When society gets too polarised, revolution or extreme criminality is the result (French revolution, Russian revolution, no-go areas of Los Angeles). So, it's not in anyone's interests to have a society that is fundamentally inequitable and suffering from extremes.

Capitalism, by its nature, produces inequity. If we could rely on the capitalists to be philanthropic, it wouldn't be so much of a problem. If it was just individuals running smallish, regional businesses and being good employers, then you'd have to say that there was a net benefit to society (jobs, wealth, tax to create infrastructure, happy work lives etc.) from their activities. In this respect, I'm a capitalist - people who start companies often risk everything to do so (so they should be rewarded for the responsibility and risks that they take), they work hard, they are creative and innovative. So, in this respect, I disagree with Marx who seemed to think that the workers should have an equal right to the fruits of the company's labours. That's not fair to the risk takers and investors.

On the other hand, large corporations unfettered by labour market laws have a history of exploitation. Most employers exploit their workers one way or the other. A typical example is the 37 hour working week contract. Contractually, you are only obliged to work 9-5:30. The reality, however, is that you're expected to work somewhere between 40 and 50 hours per week, even though no one ever has the bollocks to say that to your face. What happens is that, even if you're really good at your job, you don't get promoted, you are frowned upon, you lose brownie points etc.

(And the irony is that you're far more productive if you just do 35ish hours and stop stuffing around most of the day).

If you're an american, you may care to note that other western nations (western/northern europe, the other anglo saxon nations) all tend to have fairly strong aspects of socialism (state provided healthcare, unemployement benefits, state owned transport etc.) and are doing just fine economically. They also have far lower crime rates. And they probably don't pay hugely more in tax.

But the key is moderation and sustainability. Is your capitalist business making a net contribution or a net deficit to the world? If you happen to be particularly wealthy and philanthropic, what about the other people who are hugely wealthy but give nothing back and treat their employees really badly?

My personal view is that everyone who gets off their backside and creates something should be admired - not everyone has the get up and go to do it. If they become phenomenally wealthy and successful as a result, they probably need to recognise that they couldn't have done it alone. They couldn't have done it without their employees, family etc. or the wider society they live in, so they have a duty to pay forward or pay back. However, with nameless, faceless corporations, there is no direct connection to individual people and it's all too easy to create a lot of money for shareholders (funds, pensions) and not consider social responsibility, duty, or conscience. Unchecked, this is the ugly face of capitalism.

Another real life example is the deregulation of bus services in this country which occurred in 1990. Up until then, bus routes/services had typically been provided by council owned services. The Tory Government of the time (Thatcher) thought this was wrong and sought to privatise and de-regulate the bus industry. However, because of the profit motive, many services to rural areas (unprofitable) were likely to be cut. Government has had to continue subsidising these services so that rural areas don't end up with no services at all (socially undesirable). So, even though a fundamental tenet of Tory ideology is that the free market will engineer the best solution, even they had to put checks and balances in to prevent 20 companies vying for passengers in urban areas and ensure that services were maintained in rural areas.

The whole concept that the free market (completely unfettered) and the profit motive will produce the best solution is inherently flawed. It's flawed because the profit motivation is at a micro level - the level of share holders of a business, and doesn't take into consideration the wider social and environmental impacts of any particular profit making enterprise. What's good for share holders is not always good for the wider environment. And since nothing exists in a vacuum, the wider context has to be taken into consideration. We could even get into long-termism vs. short-termism - another problem of the dividend driven economy. (Water companies - don't reinvest enough profit back into the business to maintain required levels of social responsibiliy [i.e. plugging leaks] because they need to satisfy shareholders. Here's another model - have such companies run by business experts who get paid a premium for delivering good service, making profits, but DON'T have the companies accountable to shareholders - they should be state/non-profit owned as they provide a vital service and profits need to be retained for investment in infrastructure, not distributed to pension funds).

As for the self-righteous indignation of so many white americans against any ideology that isn't familiar or comfortable to them, I ask - how well did your elitist, capitalist ideology serve African americans for the past 3 centuries? OK, maybe that's a bit of a cheap shot - but think about it. Surely the economy of the south was built on the backs of african slaves (leverage at its worst)?

But to get back to more pertinent matters. Devastating hurricances. The product of a natural cycle or the product of greenhouse gas emissions, or a combination of both? America produces 25% of the world's pollution for 4% of its population - that's 625% more than the average per capita. Isn't it time you started listening and stopped driving your gas-guzzling vehicles half a mile up the road? Do you really need that 6l SUV, or could you do just as well with 1.0 to 1.5l vehicle? I quite enjoy walking to the shops - it gets me some much needed exercise and gives me time for my creative mind to come up with new ideas.

What's more important to you? Preserving the so-called freedoms of a capitalist society (with its inherent flaws), or survival? And to my mind, the only way to survive is through cooperation and respect for each other and mother nature.

No doubt this will draw some flack. Oh well.

Jane

"All property is theft"
A tenet of Marxism.

"Everything is on loan from the God-force"
Stuart Wilde, on Taoism

We don't really own anything, we are simply custodians. Will we be good custodians or bad custodians?

Jane

Jane,

I think the funniest point you're trying to make is that a capitalist is interested in money, and that politicians aren't.

Really though...it was funny. Imagine. A politician whose interested in the human condition. He He.

I think I'd rather live in a country where the company can put economic pressure on me instead of a country where the government can put lethal pressure on me.

Theengel,

Please don't give me any further reasons to doubt your intellect. Re-read what I wrote. I never said anything about politicians.

Jane

PS Don't be so naive. If the IRS, Feds or CIA take a dislike to you, you'll be haunted and hunted down until you feel like killing yourself or emigrating to Albania.