First, let me just say - Atrocities, you seem to be rather intelligent, and you put a lot of thought into this, so at heart I do believe you must be a good person. This despite how much we seem to disagree on matters of government and economy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Atrocities
Why should I work if my money is going to be taken from me and given to someone else?
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This is a very good question. I'd like you to ask that question of a single mother, who is working 3 part-time, minimum wage jobs, killing herself to support her children who are just going to grow up to be criminals anyway, because the system puts her in a situation where she can't provide them with proper guidance.
As Aszelendor pointed out, Socialism is not Communism. Socialist policies do not take wealth from individuals, to distribute to other individuals. Socialist policies take assets away from the unscrupulous, to provide them to the populace as a whole in an equitable manner. We socialize aspects of our society not to impact wage disparities - but only to insure and guarantee the function of a community as a whole, and the well being and quality of life of our citizens.
While Communism has surely never succeeded (in large part because of the corrupt leaders who like controlling ALL of the wealth), Socialism, as is being demonstrated by Canada, and much of western Europe, is in fact rapidly creating sustainable economies, and standards of living that will soon surpass those of the good old US of A, if we keep letting greedy and immoral people profit immensely from (essentially withholding from many, through) overcharging for basic services.
I will use myself as an example for a moment. I am considered a very intelligent person, by those who know me. I am creative, and passionate, and a great team player or leader, whichever is needed. However, I have barely managed to make enough money to keep myself off the streets (my current cost of living is about $650/month) for the past 8 years now. Why? Because I lack health insurance, and what little medical attention that I have managed to afford, did not discover what is malfunctioning in my body, leaving me unable to reliably work, and therefore rendering me unsuitable for employment in most sectors of our badly stressed job market. There are many thousands of people in similar situations as mine, who would love to contribute more to society, but who are unable to, because of chronic health concerns - health concerns which would be addressed if we Socialized medicine in a way that results in more contribution, and less cost in the long run.
Understand (I'll say this again, since it may be easy to forget), I am not particularly fond of Obama. His appeal to me, is the fact that McCain is so distasteful. Bush and Cheney were about the worst thing to ever happen to our country, by nearly all quantifiable benchmarks, and McCain wants to keep doing the same, but "better" (read: worse).
Now, getting back your original statements about Communism, it is true that no one has ever gotten such a system to work as expressly intended. The goal of such a system of course, is to eliminate gross excess and greed to the point that if each individual got approximately an equal share of the pie, they would be happy with the task at hand, because they would have a good life.
Now, to build off of that, I am not a Communist. However, I do think that we are approaching a point in human development where we can very adequately balance the flow of wealth in a way that is fair to everyone. Note that fair does not mean "equal". However, when one person makes a few phone calls here and there to keep their profit machine rolling while they lounge by their private pool, whilst someone else works 60+ hours in miserable conditions just to keep their family alive, then something is not right with the system. I think that our economic system overlooks two things: that our money is not intrinsically linked to benefit or contribution (and in many ways, profit actually results from doing harm to others), and also that money = time = life. Thus, we need not only to acknowledge that society cannot function without waiters, and gas pumpers, and custodians - but we also need to re-engineer the system so that vast amounts of profit cannot be created through artificially creating demand by withholding needed goods and services from "less powerful" citizens.
I have more to say, and I will soon, but thank you for the practice.
<3
Re: OT: US Pres election
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