fatandfast said:
That was a smooth slam on the social agenda ! Wealth redistribution and private property rights all in one. Do they not have filthy rich people and private property in all the socialist countries we are talking about ? France and Germany and Italy to name a few. Are you saying that a person will have to park his or her limo at a casino in Monte Carlo?
We're not talking about a redistribution of wealth or the elimination of private property in the marxist sense, which, while arguably the most humane of ideologies and socially just, is not practicable (as we saw in the Soviet misadventure) because utopian.
We are simply talking about taking out of the American capitalist system the greed of the economically dominant class, with its corporate and finacial market agendas, to ensure that some basic human needs (like healthcare and education) are provided for by collective society following the European model.
For all the reasons Titan-90 mentioned above, the European model is simply more civil and just for all members living within the society. It is certainly far from perfect, but more civil than what one gets in America. While nobody in Europe, if they desire to become rich, are prevented from doing so from the State. However there are more rules to abide by, because the economic interests of the individual are not supposed to prevail over those of the community at large.
In America, just the opposite holds true: namely that the financial interests of the individual pervail over those of collective society. And this is ideologically, and therefore culturally, reinforced by the State itself: which gives tax breaks to the mega-rich (so that the famous "crumbs" falling down from the table of the rich will be more abondant for the poor - so-claimed Regan), does not spend public funds on healthcare (or at least in extremely limited quantities proportionally speaking) while letting the financial interests of the insurance corporations dictate who gets treatment and what kind of care, strongly promotes private funded education (which leads to huge student debt) and withholds from its citizens a number of other social programs that taxation in Europe provides for.
What has taken place since the Regan years in deregulated financial market capitalism, has simply lead to the rich getting richer and the middle and lower classes becoming increasingly burdoned with various forms of debt as their mean wages have not come up to meet the inflation rates, nor pay off the nation's debt. And the "crumbs" have of course not been falling in any greater quantities, because the rich have even been allowed by government to sweep these up for themselves.
And now with competition comming from overseas, and job outsourcing to cut labor and production costs being the sacred policy of the capitalist industry owners (not exlusive to the US), work opportunities in America have diminished as the job market has become less dynamic and increasingly tight. This as well as the recent financial crisis caused by Wall Street's insatiable greed and the US government's unwillingness to give the financial market strickter rules (that has led to entire savings being wipped out for millions of working class Americans), accompanied by immense public spending to bail the so-called financial gurus out that the next several generations of American workers will be paying for (while surly their wages will not be increased to meet this debt burdon, further weakening their financial status), not to mention the colossal military spending to fund wars on two fronts: has meant that the middle and lower classes in America today are worse off than they were a generation ago. And things will only get worse if change does not occur. These weaker classes are even made to take on the burdon of costly insurance policies for their family medical care and high tuition costs to educate their children, in addition to having of course to pay their taxes. Taxes which largely go toward paying for the military and the national debt. The latter mostly generated by a wealthy class who rules at the financial markets, the same wealthy class that has seen
their taxes systymatically diminished proportionate to earnings, because supported by a political elite that caters almost exclusively to their interests. This amounts to a sitution that is not only scandalous from the point of view of American civilization, but offends the entire history of democracy and the emergence of the modern State going back to the Enlightenment period.
The very first thing that absolutely has to change in this unjust system, is that the rich have to be forced by government to pay their fair share to the collective community based on just proportional taxation, and no longer recieve the scandalous tax breaks the politicians have repeatedly given them over the past several decades. No more, no less, just their fair share. Wages need to come up for the middle and lowerclasses, their debt droped from, among other things, getting them off of credit purchasing (which higher wages would partially help, though a psychological factor needs to change too), and taxes need to also cover everyone's medical and eduaction costs. The markets need to be regulated more stricktly, so as to avoid the kind of financial collapse the bubble burst caused and to ensure relatively high protection of one's retirement plans.
So we are not asking for America to become a marxist state, simply one which ensures greater social justice for all those that make up the national community. To not effect these changes means that the nation is destined to see increasingly hard times for an ever growing and marginalized working class, while at the same time the financial elite become an increasingly and unjustly privliged class.
Is this the democratic model the nation wants to export globally? If necessary, by force?
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