ravens said:
Why on earth would I waste 5 seconds taking you seriously enough to try and have a meaningful dialogue? You're a joke. 60 degrees last couple days. Warm weather must be nice for you. No more defending your turf on the grate against the other schizos.
Tell you what ravens, it is obvious that you and I share an affinity for insult. Well, lets drop that and have a serious discussion of economics, and economic political policy. If you would like to discuss corporate influence and why the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case is not only dangerous, but wrong (based on the erroneous ruling in the 1886 Santa Clara County vs Southern Pacific Railroad case), we can do that also, but lets stick to economics initially. I will start with some broad statements, and we can expand from that.
Economics: The term "socialism" is mostly misunderstood in the current American political lexicon. It is used to describe the idea of government take-over of the economy in totality. What many of the people who use the term fail to see is that it also includes things like meat inspection. In fact, many have no idea that the first major steps into changing our economic system from pure capitalist thought, to a mixed economic system (one that incorporates command/socialist principles into a primarily market/capitalist system) came in the form of governmental requirements regarding food. Upton Sinclair was a socialist, and his call for inspection of the meat packing industry led to the Pure Food and Drug Act, and the Meat Packing Act which were policies entirely based on socialist political thought. See, any governmental requirement of business affects its profit by causing that company to spend money on what the government sees as the common good. It is a "command" function, and therefore socialist in nature.
Lets take a modern example: Alaska. In Alaska, oil companies do not own the land on which they drill. The state owns it and charges them for the right. When any government owns one of the factors of production (land being a natural resource), then that is a command function and is therefore socialist in nature. The state then takes the money made from the oil companies and distributes it to every citizen of Alaska in the form of a check. Now, to *******ize the words of David Allen Coe, if that ain't socialist, I'll kiss your a$$.
Taking all of that into account, and the fact that every major industrialized country in the world uses just such socialist principles in their economies and began doing so primarily in the 20th century; and the fact that in the 20th century, we saw the greatest growth of wealth for the greatest number of people in the history of mankind, I would suggest that a mixed economic system is superior to the idea of unfettered capitalism. In reality, there are no major examples of pure capitalism producing anywhere near the results.
Economic Political Policy: Clearly, the history of the 20th century is that incorporation of socialist principles into capitalist economic systems by the governments of every major industrialized nation is the preferred method of conducting commerce. The reasons for this are many, but I would suggest that they primarily arose because of the expense and danger governments face when the impoverished grow so numerous and so desperate that they revolt. Lest we forget the lessons of history (South America did, and look at what happened there in the 70's and continues today), incorporation of socialist principles so that society benefits from the forced expenditure of corporations and redistribution of a small amount of the wealth placates the populace. They are able to buy small things like TV's and phones, etc. When given the ability to participate in commerce above mere subsistence, people are less likely to organize, protest, and become violent.
A side benefit is that those people are also buying goods and services where before, they were just buying food. That created markets where there were not markets. YATZY!
Also note that same policy is the reason that the Tea Party movement will also dwindle and sputter (unless we have a major collapse). See, they are angry that they cannot afford a new Ford F150, not because they cannot buy food. One will cause anger and grand pronouncements, and the other will cause bloodshed.
Also note that debt as a percentage of GDP is nowhere near being as high as it was during the 1930's, and that we recovered from that as did every other major industrialized nation on the planet. Just because The Heritage Foundation says that FDR did more harm than good does not mean that they have ANY examples of governments during the 1930's that used any other policy than governmental spending. See, there are no "free market" examples of recovery from that time. None. Why would you try something that has no proof of efficacy for one that has numerous examples of successful implementation?
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