I really would love some opinions on this. Not trying to stoke any fires, just really want your thoughts. Please don't make this a left or right bashing thread.

On economic issues, I'm a conservative and am pretty nervous about some of the ideas that I'm hearing from the Democratic party. Not all, but some.

Nationalized health care, in addition to some of the economic ideas being thrown out there really sound alot like Socialism to me. Raising taxes on small businesses and a majority of Americans so that we can have more government programs for the poor is the biggest example. Taxing families and companies in order to put that money towards erasing or minimizing our "carbon footprint" is another. Am I wrong here?

Do you believe that these ideas amount to Socialism? Do you believe that there is a movement afoot to put this country on a path to Socialism?

Thanks!

I'm personally against socialism, and I think it goes against our founding ideas, but it's sad that there are any arguments for it. Think about it, people support socialism because some people aren't being taken care of by society. In our capitalistic society, we have enough wealth for everyone to live a great life if we actually helped each other out of the goodness of our heart. So while I'm against big government and socialist programs, I think we as individuals have a moral obligation, to of ourselves, help society without turning to goverments and politicians to save the needy. It is our time to take up the call to save humanity and this earth. If everyone were to go out of their way to help two people, the world would be perfected in weeks.

America as most countries has what is called a mixed economy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_economy

I like our health care (altho not our lack of doctors and nurses) but I don't like people abusing the welfare/employment insurance programs and whatnot. I don't like politicians stealing our money with their 150+ grand sallary's.

That's true, but what happends when one element slowly overtakes the other?

So what? Capitalism can not work without socialism, and socialism can not work without Capitalism. We already know that if capitalism is left without any socialist checks, it consumes itself and the society in which it exists.



Who's talking about doing this? Democrats are talking about raising taxes on the wealthiest of our society, not on small businesses and the majority of americans.



This is an example of capitalism needing socialism in order to survive. Unfortunately, people need an economic incentive to change behavior. People won't voluntarily stop driving large, inefficient vehicles without a financial incentive, etc. etc.
If we want to protect the environment and reduce our energy consumption, we need financial incentive to do so. So if the majority of the society decide that preserving the ecosystem is important enough to financially penalize those who choose not to conserve, I'm ok with that. If we decide that because we all live here, we all should chip in to clean the joint up, I'm ok with that too. We are all members of the wealthiest society in the history of mankind, we can afford it.




No. But we learned the hard way that capitalism self destructs without some socialist measures.

I get where you're coming from, but about this:



Everything I've seen, read and heard has me convinced that Americans with wages as low as $39,000 will see a tax increase. Also, taxing small business will only cause more price increases which will adversely affect the poor more than anyone. Small business owners (my father is one) are already strangled by taxes (Fed and State) and struggling to make ends meet. They will see their taxes increase because despite their high expenses, their incomes are usually in higher brackets.

Then you should better vet your sources. Nobody is saying they are going to tax small businesses. That's a scare tactic used by the opposition, and it's working on you.

Neognosis, capitalism doesn't need socialism to survive. Capitalism which is abused by humans needs socialism to survive. Socialism is a government program. Governments fix the problems that man creates. In an ideal society, socialism wouldn't be needed. So I don't think the blame is on capitalism, as capitalism is an economic expression of man, man is the problem.

There is no ideal society.

History has shown that capitalism consumes the socitey in which it resides.

People will always abuse capitalism, people will always be people, at least in the forseeable future. If people were not greedy, and if capitalism did not operate under the false tenant that greed is good, we would not need socialism. But it does, and people do, and so some socialist measures are necessary in the real world.

But socialism also cannot sustain itself without some capitalism either, as history has also shown us.

Unless you attack a problem at its root, it won't improve. Rather than seeking for the government to save us, we should seek to save ourselves. Anyone can thrive in a capitalist society, that is a fact. For some it is near impossible to do so, for other it is near impossible not to, but anyone can. If all of us were to pursue success and use that to help the less fortunate, we can fix society. As I said in my first post, if every single person on this planet were to go out of their way to help two others, the world would be perfect in a week or two.

Unless you include a doubling of the capital-gains tax, in which case anyone with any kind of investments will be paying double the taxes on those investment earnings than they are now.

In this society, we are the government. Besides, we aren't looking for the gov to save us.



That's ridiculous. Jews and Muslmis will still be warring over territory, there will still be tension over oil prices, fundamentalists will still seek to impose their views on others.

That's sort of naive.

While you're off helping two people, the businesses that exist under this imaginary totally capitalist society will be dumping mercury into the water to save on dumping costs (no fines for polluting, we don't want to financially force people to act properly....) and poisoning your kids. But they'll stop because they want to be good people, right? The FDA will be disbanded, as it's a socialist concept to have the gov't approve or disapprove things you should be free to purchase whenever you want. Sure, the market will determine what drugs are safe, but only after a few thousand people have been poisoned.

I'm not saying that I want large socialist programs, I'm jsut saying that capitalism destroys the society around it without any socialist mesures, and vice versa.

But people like to panic and get all scared by the S word.

Where in the Constitution does it say that government ( tax payers ) is responsible for paying for everyone's health care ?

Where does it say that the gov't can levy an income tax?

Where does it say that the gov't CAN'T adopt universal health care? Where in the constitution does it say that the gov't is responsible for building and maintaining roads?

That's a poor argument, as in 2008 we do a lot of things that they didn't consider to include or exclude in the constitution.

You're missing the point. If we were helping each other, Jews and Muslims wouldn't be killing each other. That's my point. I understand this isn't going to happen, so of course it would seem naive. The point is, if everyone actually cared, it would only take a few weeks to fix the world. As for oil prices, we don't need oil. The technology exists to remove oil completely and turn to other energies. The powers that be don't want this however. As for pollution and your point on the FDA, in this hypothetical situation, people would forget about greed and take some pay cuts to not pollute and to further test their products to a point where you don't need an FDA. It would be a society built on trust, rather than conspiracies and lies. I didn't say this world would happen, I said if every single human acted on this notion today, it would. Think about the domino affect that would occur if every person were to not harm anyone for a week, and were to help two people. This won't happen today, but it can start. It can start with you and it can start with me.

I get your point. It's just a little bit too pie in the sky, lollipop and gumdrop unrealistic for me to let it slide.

You can't fix the world in a few weeks, even if people were helping other people. You're basically requiring a complete 180 on human nature. YOu might as well say nothing.



You would need a lot more than helping two people to bring about the fantastical changes you are talking about.

Obviously. It will take hundreds of years for this to become a reality even if people were to act now. However, it's easy to belittle and idea by comparing it to candy. I don't really understand your comment on me saying nothing. Could you elaborate?



Not true. Think about it mathematically. There are six billion people on this planet. If everyone helped two, twelve billion would get helped. Now think how much easier your life would be if every day no one worked against you, and two people helped you out. The world would start to see huge changes in weeks. First of all there would be no war. There would be no starvation. There would be no homeless. That could happen in a few weeks. We have the resources, we have the intelligence, all we need is the will and the discipline to act.

Government run healthcare in Canada, France and Britian is failing. Why would it work here. If you've ever tried to get medical services in a VA Hospital or Clinic, you know what the future of American healthcare will be like under Obama. "Take a number please..."

I think that has probably been exaggerated by Republicans. I have a friend who lives in Toronto and says he loves their health care system.

Yes but who is less fortunte? A person who has a disability and can't work...of course. A person who is physically healthy but is used to being on the government dole? Hardly. That's where we go from a valid responsability to care for the less fortunate to socialism.

Didn't Hurrican Katrina teach us anything? The dark side of that city had a bright light upon it. We saw how the City of New Orleans had set up a welfare state and the people left behind were totally dependant....many still are to this day.

*ahem* If everyone pursued success and helped the less fortunate, the physically healthy person you named would be doing so.

On the VA Clinic and hospital thing I'm speaking from personal experience. My husband is a disabled vet. I promise you, I'm being kind. A hospital stay for us was a nightmare.

My husband's family in Canada spend hundreds of dollars traveling back to the US when they need surgery or really anything other than cough syrup. In a government run system, when you need urgent surgery, you're placed on a waiting list...it can be many months long.

I edited the post you replied to...

"IF" they did. I'm talking about people who walk into my office every day wanting a mortgage to buy a home and they're getting $3,000 in social security disability because they have asthma and 5 kids.

That's fine. But you brought that up in regards to my hypothetical. I'm not excusing their actions. However, in my post, I was speaking idealogically.

Well, we can't argue this point if we're hearing different things.

I did however read an article recently about how pregnant women in Canada are being flown to US hospitals because there's just no room and not enough staff back home. I wish I knew where that article was. I'll try to find it.

That's what Dixie does. She IS one of those repubicans exaggerating things and painting an innacurate picture.

By the way, the VA hospital system you are using as a basis for your conclusion had its funding cut.....but not by democrats.

Would be nice woudn't it? Sorry if I misread that post.

There's no need to get testy. I'm not exagerrating or making up anything. Why would I waste my time on nonsense like that? Everything I say I know to be true or I wouldn't say it.

No matter who cut funding, if you think that same fate would be avoided if our health care were suddenly run by the government, you're fooling yourself. My God, the government has botched our social security system and we're going to hand our healthcare over to them? No thanks.

There have been many conversations on UM about government health care over the years and from what I've heard it's not all it's cracked up to be. The lines are months long for tests, there is a shortage of doctors and so much is taken out of their checks that they could pay for private insurance.

Like Dixie says...the government screws everything else up and I don't want them in charge of MY families health care, thank you.

So you'd want to be turned back if you couldn't afford it?

I'm all for a 2 teir system, if you have the cash and can't stand to wait, go to a private hospital, that'll loosen the strain on the public ones, and hopefully shorten the lines.

Also make it easier for immigrants to have their medical skills recognized here. If you come from india and went through med school and served for a decade in a hospital you are still denied a job here because Canada/America dosn't recognize every countries education system and whatnot. I heard that of the few hundred or so immigrant healthcare proffesinals in B.C only a few are lucky enough to get the handful of resident programs that will put them on their way of getting a job here (they have to serve for a year or 2 under supervision and whatnot)..

That's not at all what happens in the US. Instead, the poor are given Medicaid coverage and the taxpayers pick up the costs anyway. The class really getting screwed by the situation in the US is the middle class, not the poor.

I don't know much about that but my gut response is that I'd want a doctor from another country to be certified here at least. It should be easier than just a few getting thru, but I wouldn't want a doctor who was educated somewhere else and didn't have some training and certification here.

You're so right.

You've been listening to too much liberal propaganda. I've got many relatives that have been in and out of hospitals and doctors offices under indigent care and they receive the same care as I do. The only difference is that they have to wait longer like the people in the countries with governement health care. That's what happens when the governement gets involved.

Ya but then you're paying for facilities you aren't using.

Keep in mind that the VA is closer to the British system of health care, where the entire public health care apparatus includes both government-employed service providers and government-provided payment. Most universal health care advocates in the United States aren't advocating we adopt this; they simply argue that we should do something like the Canadian single-payer system (or the French), where the government on different levels pays for health care, and allows private health care providers to organize to meet demand based on the negotiated fee schedules.



What kind of surgery, and how urgent? Virtually all the Canadians I've talked to have said that while you have to wait a bit for less urgent medical care, urgent people usually get bumped straight to the front on medical affairs. The main wait issues occur with regards to elective surgery (read the link), and I'm not extremely bothered by that; it allows doctors to choose patients based on the urgency of the problem rather than on how much money you have to pay for care. Better that everybody have access to the some care varying on their need rather than only a few people having access to the best care and most other people thrown into bankruptcy if they hit a major medical cost (namely a chronic cost, before somebody throws the "but emergency centers can not reject people!" line)

Mind you, a lot of this has to do with the fact that the Canadian federal government has basically slashed health care funding considerably, to the point where the provinces pay the lion's share of the costs. If they would allocate some more money, then it wouldn't be as much of a problem (but then they wouldn't be close to a balanced budget anymore, like they were a while back).



Are we talking major illnesses here? And how "indigent" were your relatives? That's not to mention the irony of you criticizing the government for allowing your relatives to get care when without it, it's arguable that they would go without if they weren't on the verge of death.

But then you get rich people buying out of the system, which over time corrodes public support for it on their part.

These are hard core people. I mean people who grew up on farms and never wore anything but a pair of workboots and overalls. Definitely not elective surgery. One of my husband's uncles needed some sort of stomach surgery and was put on a six month waiting list, despite his intense pain. He got the cash and drove across the border to have the surgery within two weeks. I have to giggle because these folks I'm talking about would NEVER have elective or unnessecary surgery.

I also read an article on a British news site (it may have been the daily mail). I was about a young woman in her twenties who was dying of cervical cancer. The reason they caught it too late was because the government healthcare system didn't ALLOW her to have a pap smear until she was in her early twenties. This is because of budget shortfalls and is extremely dangerous. A girls' first pap smear should be no later than 16 and each year after that. It was a heartbreaking story and the article claimed that this is a growing problem. These kinds of stories really want me to keep the government far far away from my health care.

Socialism's not all that bad, you know.

We've seen socialism work in places like Sweden, and Norway.

They've developed into extremely academic, richer, high standard of living, countries with low drug rates, crime rates, church rates, and scientifically progressive cultures.

Cheers,
SQLserver

I just can't agree with a system that takes one man's hard earned money and gives it to another (even though we've got that going on to some extent now).

That's the beauty of Socialism; it doesn't do the above.

What Socialism DOES do is take a ridiculously small portion of every rich man's large amount of money("hard earned" or not), and use it for the bettering of all of America, whether it be for Healthcare, college, the environment, education, etc.

Socialism doesn't make everyone "equal" economically; That is Communism. Socialism has everyone contribute a small percentage to help the community as a whole.

And what are the results? Socialist countries get free healthcare, free college, free welfare, and all together a more regulated, peaceful, and friendly community.

Cheers,
SQLserver

I've had several uncles and cousins that have never officially had a home. They live in campers on whoevers property will allow it, moving often, only working enough to buy what they need for a few days. They've gotten free health care for everything from the flu and shingles to later in life one of my uncles was in and out the hospital for months before he died of cancer at the age of 87. Like most normal people they have never hesitated to go the doctor/clinic for anything that needed attention and it was taken care of.



Where did I criticize the government for allowing anyone to get health care? What I was criticizing was the long waits. At least some people that are on Medicaid are trying to work and better their situations which means that they miss work for a whole day waiting at the clinic, sometimes two. When I go to the doctor I wait maybe fifteen minutes, see the doctor, and am back at work in about an hour and a half. If I need tests they are scheduled within the same week or sometimes that day, but they have to wait for weeks or months sometimes.

There was very nearly a real discussion of policy on here. Excellent. But I think this one is a little too ambitious--health care, poverty, tax policy, etc all in one thread? More of these, targeted a bit more, might be interesting.



We should be careful with terminology here. "Nationalized health care" usually refers to actual government-run health care (i.e. government doctors, government hospitals, etc), which neither Obama nor the Democratic Party is proposing. We should also be careful not to try and find a label with which to pigeonhole an idea. Let's look at ideas based on the merits, not the ideological label.

The goal of Obama's plan is to make health insurance available to anyone who desires it, regardless of income level primarily via subsidies (unlike the Clinton and Edwards plans, Obama's does not mandate that everyone have insurance, although it does put a mandate on "children," i.e. people under 25). A public plan would also be made available, providing the option of getting insurance through the government instead of private insurers. But this is insurance, not nationalized health care. You would take your insurance and find a private doctor just as you do now.



Obama proposes a tax cut for the majority of households (see below). As for small businesses, I'm not sure where you heard he wants to raise taxes on them. In fact, as far as health care goes, Obama would like to see small businesses get a tax credit:

Barack Obama will create a Small Business Health Tax Credit to provide small businesses with a refundable tax credit of up to 50 percent on premiums paid by small businesses on behalf of their employees. This new credit will provide a strong incentive to small businesses to offer high quality health care to their workers and help improve the competitiveness of America’s small businesses.

A truly universal health care system would aid businesses--small and large--by removing some of the burden of health care costs they face. Caps on wage raises during World War II--an effort to control inflation--led businesses to look for other ways to attract workers. This is how employer-based health care became institutionalized in this country. But today American companies are competing in the global marketplace with companies in nations that already have government-sponsored health care (as nearly every other industrialized nation in the world does) and thus don't have to shoulder the costs by themselves. It's time to enter the 21st century.



Well, why do you oppose anti-poverty and environmental policies?



Well, that's incorrect. The Tax Policy Center put out an analysis of the Obama and McCain tax plans recently and found that the majority of Americans will get a tax cut under the Obama plan (whereas the McCain tax cuts are clustered at the very top of the income scale):

The two candidates' plans would have sharply different distributional effects. Senator McCain's tax cuts would primarily benefit those with very high incomes, almost all of whom would receive large tax cuts that would, on average, raise their after-tax incomes by more than twice the average for all households. Many fewer households at the bottom of the income distribution would get tax cuts and those whose taxes fall would, on average, see their after-tax income rise much less. In marked contrast, Senator Obama offers much larger tax breaks to low- and middle-income taxpayers and would increase taxes on high-income taxpayers. The largest tax cuts, as a share of income, would go to those at the bottom of the income distribution, while taxpayers with the highest income would see their taxes rise.

As someone pointed out above, in our system we are our government. Government is the means through which we come together to both save ourselves and save each other. "Of the people, by the people, for the people..." and all that jazz.



I think it's well-established that the purpose of government, loosely put, it to protect, defend, and foster fundamental human rights. We decide as a people what those rights are. The United States is a signatory of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, Article 25 of which states:

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Now, six decades later, polling consistently shows a majority in support of universal health care.



The VA consistently ranks as the best aspect of the United States health care system, your own anecdotes aside. But Obama isn't pushing for a single-payer system, as explained above.

I have a question for you: do you believe that some Americans should be deprived of health care so that others get it faster?




The majority of the uninsured poor are not eligible for Medicaid.