75 Ways Socialism Has Improved America

[eridani]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/03/29/1078852/-75-Ways-Socialism-Has-Improved-America

Socialism is taxpayer funds being used collectively to benefit society as a whole, despite income, contribution, or ability.

Sounds horrible, huh?

Well I hate to be the one to tell you, but Socialism, which you have been told to fear all your life, is responsible for all this...

1. The Military/Defense - The United States military is the largest and most funded socialist program in the world. It operates thanks to our taxpayer dollars and protects the country as a whole. From the richest citizens to the homeless who sleep under the bridge. We are all protected by our military whether we pay taxes or not. This is complete socialism.

2. Highways/Roads - Those roads and highways you drive on every single day are completely taxpayer funded. Your tax dollars are used to maintain, expand, and preserve our highways and roads for every one's use. President Eisenhower was inspired by Germany's autobahn and implemented the idea right here in America. That's right, a republican president created our taxpayer funded, national highway system. This was a different time, before the republican party came down with a vicious case of rabies that never went away.

3. Public Libraries - Yes. That place where you go to check out books from conservative authors telling you how horrible socialism is, is in fact socialism. Libraries are taxpayer funded. You pay a few bucks to get a library card and you can read books for free for the rest of your life.

4. Police - Ever had a situation where you had to call the police? Then you have used a taxpayer funded socialist program. Anyone can call the police whether they pay taxes or not. They are there to protect and serve the community, not individuals. This is complete socialism on a state level, but still socialism all the same. Would you rather have to swipe your credit card before the police will help you?

[rogerashton]

1. Socialism is a political position that advocates a society without class distinctions.

Splendid as some of those programs are, they are not socialism. As Engels said, Bismarck may choose to build a steel mill: to regard that as socialism is spurious. At the other extreme, government-controlled and funded military and police forces are characteristic of capitalism, the key to the step from feudalism to capitalism. What this blog does is point up just how absurd the "small state" idea of the Anglophone right wing is.

[Fairgo]

13. Insightful

I think this forum would be a good place to return to the core meanings and values (the radical root, as it were) of interesting ideas and fruitful debates that were trivialised in the slow slide to U.S. neofeudalism. To look at the new world order through the lens of a reimagined social critique might be a tonic to this flagging party.

[Triana]

2. Privatization Benefits the 1%, While Public Services Benefit Everyone

Private systems are focused on making profits for a few well-positioned people. Public systems, when sufficiently supported by taxes, work for everyone in a generally equitable manner.

The following are six specific reasons why privatization simply doesn't work.

1. The Profit Motive Moves Most of the Money to the Top

The federal Medicare Administrator made $170,000 in 2010. The president of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas made over ten times as much in 2012. Stephen J. Hemsley, the CEO of United Health Group, made almost 300 times as much in one year, $48 million, most of it from company stock.

. . .

2. Privatization Serves People with Money, the Public Sector Serves Everyone

A good example is the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), which is legally required to serve every home in the country. Fedex and United Parcel Service (UPS) can't serve unprofitable locations. Yet the USPS is much cheaper for small packages. An online comparison revealed the following for the two-day shipment of a similarly-sized envelope to another state:

-- USPS 2-Day $5.68 (46 cents without the 2-day restriction)
-- FedEx 2-Day $19.28
-- UPS, 2 Day $24.09

USPS is so inexpensive, in fact, that Fedex actually uses the U.S. Post Office for about 30 percent of its ground shipments.


THE REST: http://thecontributor.com/public-beats-private-six-reasons-why

[nxylas]

3. Not sure who this is aimed at

Last edited Mon Feb 9, 2015, 10:21 AM - Edit history (1)

Most of these are things that Republicans (in both parties) want to abolish or privatize. Anyone who shrinks from the word "socialism" like Dracula from a crucifix is unlikely to be convinced by this article.

[aspirant]

4. Why not just change the name

To People Economics or Main Street Economics. Repubs do it all the time e.g. "The Patriot Act"

[sabrina 1]

8. Republicans are not the only ones who want to privatize everything. The Third Way

now ensconced in the Dem Party are pushing for the same things as Republicans. They are not Democrats, they merely moved into the Dem Party in order to make sure that their agenda will be supported by enough votes in the Dem Party since the Republican Party is fully owned.

That is why we see Dems voting for Republican issues and for a long time couldn't understand it.

They pretend to care about a few liberal issues, Minorities, Gays, Women, in order to cover for the rest of their agenda which is as far to the right, on Economic issues (if they did care about those liberal issues, there is no way they would support Republican economic policy.

[nxylas]

10. Fixed

I added the words "in both parties" to my previous post.

[sabrina 1]

11. Thanks I used to blame it all on Republicans also, then noticed how often they might not

have had enough votes to pass something not beneficial to the people in general but always seemed to get just enough from Dems to get their agenda passed.

Elizabeth Warren's Amendment a few weeks ago was an example.

Repubs vote in lockstep, Dems provided with them with enough to get their 60+ votes in the Senate.

[whereisjustice]

5. It should be noted that in Democratic Party leadership circles - they do not agree with your

OP. In fact, the neo-liberalism, third way Democratic Party mantra takes as dogma that society will be better served by government acting as a contracting authority who turns these services over to private industry which will achieve necessary controls against abuse by self regulation.

If this sounds a lot like Ronald Reagan of the 1980s, it is.

The corporate Democratic Party of today would much rather have an inefficient system where legions of middle men adding ZERO value and service put themselves between your money and the end product you have purchased - similar to our bloated, piece of shit health care system we call the best in the world.

Everyone gets their cut. Except for those earning less than $250k per year.

So in fact, you had as many or more civilian contractors in Iraq as soldiers.

Our schools are being privatized.

Major road projects are being sold off to corporations for future value in tolls.

Our libraries are being shut down and/or privatized.

Our police and prison systems are being outsourced to private firms.

Etc.

I think the Debbie Washerhands Schultz's of the world have completely taken for granted that there are people who work for a living not because of pure profit, but because they are good at what they do and can make a difference. We've lost that in Government. Replaced with the likes of Hillary Clinton and Washherhands Shultz who literally have no knowledge average people, their skills, their needs and desires.

All they see is money and personal fortunes.

[antiquie]

12. Rec this post as well as the OP ~ nt

[Phlem]

6. yet there are still people on DU who

vigilantly opposed to socialism. The rigid reasoning can be quite depressing and disgusting. Actually trying to close threads where people discuss socialism because "We're the Democratic party, this isn't Socialist Underground". Ugh.

[eridani]

7. These days, all public goods are called socialism, and are under serious attack n/t

[demwing]

9. Pin of the Week!

Congrats eridani, your post has been selected the Pin of the Week, and will stay pinned till Monday, 2/16/15!

[TBF]

14. I'm so happy to see this.

I have a question/comment as well so I'll just put it up here in this pinned post.

If anyone gets the idea of starting a new website/forum in order to support actual progressive candidates please let me know. I have always enjoyed DU because it simply gets so much traffic. But I will be spending less time here as Hillary is being crammed down our throats (as is happening in GD this weekend).