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Originally Posted by Dylflon
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Lime = Condescending
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Well, I guess thats your opinion. They weren't intended to be, as I explained in my earlier post. I don;t feel the need to explain my self further, so if you still feel that way, go right ahead. I would ask that if you are going to respond to one sentence or two of my posts, at least acknowledge the other few paragraphs.
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On the subject of how evil you seem to make leftism and socialism out to be:
Am I mistaken or have your banks not just been nationalized?
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Yes, and I don't like it one bit. There is far too much centralization of power in the economic front right now, especially when the government decided to force banks to sell equity to it, even banks that were doing ok. If monopolies/consolidation of powers are bad in private industry. why are they so widely accepted when the government centalizes it? If Wal-Mart is bad, what happens when the government excercizes those same forces?
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And as far as I know it I believe your public school system is made free to children.
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This is an area where I actually agree with reasonable government control and funding as I think it truly does even the playing field, BUT, I do not believe that it should be controlled to the point that most progressive thinkers do. I believe in school choice, and charter schools and voucher programs have been a blessing for a school system that struggles greatly to serve those that need it the most, and I believe the money paid by the parents should follow the child. These programs are greatly opposed by leftists in our country.
Honeslty, with the basic expert consensus that the American school system is a failure (I don't entirely agree with this), I wouldn't bring that up as an example of how well socialism works.
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In fact...if socialist ideals were brought to your health care perhaps you could have free health care like many other first world nations.
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I've seen socialized healthcare up close and personal. Great for a "stick out your tongue and say ahhh" check up, but when the chips are really down and you need a specialist, its absolutely pathetic. My father in law is a Veteran on disability who needed a heart transplant. The transplant went over fine, but it was his care afterwards that nearly killed him, as they rotated doctors who double and triple prescribed him medication (10 times the normal dose of Prednazone), and after nearly killing him threw him out the door when he hit $1 Million dollars because a spreadsheet told them to.
Later, he broke his arm and needed to be prepped overnight because of the imminue deficiency he has as a result of anti-rejection meds, and they refused unless they put him on a morphine drip. Reason: They had spent all the money the government allowed for the heart transplant, but they could spend the money if it were for pain, so to get him prepped they needed to lie to the government, falsify documents, and then spend thousands of unneeded taxpayer dollars on a morphine drip he didn't need. When you are a patient of the government, your physician is a spreadsheet.
Besides the horror of my anecdote, I could also post the rediculous wait times for specialists in Canada, and how those with the means often come to America and pay for specialist care. The main thing I'd like to get you to think about is how the socialist healthcare nations depend on free market nations for their treatments and services. The great innovations and techniques are not being discovered in nations that socialisze their healthcare, they are being created in nations that reward innovation. Even pharmaceutical companies based in more socialized nations do most of their research and develoipment in the US (GloxoSmithKline for example) because of the freedom they enjoy. Socialized nations piggy back their care on free markets, and without the American free market, the level of treatment you currently enjoy would not exist and I dare say the level of treatment in the world would be far lower and the length of our lives would be dramatically lower.
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I think left wing ideals might just be the right thing for America right now. You need health care reform, educational reform, and perhaps some institutions to help the millions of Americans who will be losing their jobs in the recession.
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Well, I'd rather have the occasional drop in employment than the seemingly permanent unemployment rate of 11% or more we see in France, Germany, etc. Even they are electing more conservative leadership to fix the issues.
I agree with most of those observations except for the last, but the problem I have with your solutions is the same I have with Marxist solutions. Karl Marx was a brilliant social critic, but his solutions where terrible and history has proven this. These issues need to involve free markets and incorporate the power of them to be truly successful.
1) Healthcare - The best healthcare in the world is provided by private companies, there is no argument in this, the issue is getting it to more people. Instead of the blanket solution of "let the government do it" we should seriously provide tort reform to limit pain and suffering malpractice rewards, which would greatly reduce the cost of malpractice insurance that is crippling our medical community with insane overhead costs and forcing doctors out of my home state of Pennsylvania. Also, instead of indirectly charging everyone for their "free" inferior healthcare, let them keep the money they earned in the first place with tax credits and then allow them to purchase their own healthcare tax free. Not only would this create more choice and competition, but it would also help with one of the greatest challenges of employer based healthcare: what do you do between jobs? If employees managed their own care, they would already have first rate healthcare, temporarily unemployed or no. And for the record, yes, I am advocating the abandonment of employer provided healthcare, which by the way, was created as a reult of punitive economic policies of the great depression. This would increase the funds busineeses could offer directly to the employee, and those funds could then be applied tax free to the employee's healthcare of THEIR CHOICE. We keep our current medicaid and medicare socialized system for the truly indigent and penniless.
2) Education - The best use of public funds in education right now are being spent by private companies, like the 30 or so charter schools in New Orleans, and through vouchers that have been a huge success as McCain mentioned in his last debate. If No Child Left Behind has tought us anything its that throwing money at a problem does not solve it, and bigger is not better. I was not a charter school fan at first, but after seeing how they provide such better choice for families and smaller class sizes for students, their level of edcuation has skyrocketed and these schools can worry about teaching and not student management due to insane school size. Once again, these are public funds, but it is not public execution. Allow free markets to work with our tax dollars, and they show great success.
3) Institutions - What kind of institutions beyond what we alkready have? Thats an honest question.
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I'm not going to claim to know your stance on any of these matters but I hear a lot of people using tax cuts in their arguments and complaining that they won't get them under Obama. Well tough shit, man. America isn't doing so hot these days. I reckon America should be taking it's tax money and putting it towards the social institutions that your country needs to fix up.
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And thats an opinion I fundamentally disagree with on a philisophical level. Let me ask you a question: With unemployment going up, how will taxing our comanies far more inspire them to hire more people or not continue with more layoffs? Actions have uninteded consequences.
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I don't mind paying taxes when I know that if I didn't I perhaps wouldn't be able to enjoy such things as free health care, and public schools for my future children.
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Please don't be so melodramatic to portray America as some third world nation. The fact is that we have economic cycles, but over the last 30 years our levels of wealth and and standard of living have greatly improved while allowing us to be free of much of the buracracy and nanny state-like control of other nations. You could also make the case that our greatest dalience with socialist philosophy during the great depression actually made the problem worse and last for 10 years instead of two. Read the book "The Forgotten Man" for that economic argument.
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How the hell has socialism become synonymous with evil? I think it beats the hell out of this self-devouring corporate-favored capitalist system that has been at the root of such problems as terrible environmental damage, exploitation of foreign workers, and the ability for companies to hold your life at ransom every time you need to visit the hospital for serious illness. Not to say that I think that communism is sweet and everyone should make the same wage but I'll be god damned if I believe that a system where very few benefit greatly while the majority of people have very little is a system that works.
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I've never said that socialism is evil, but it is a horrible idea put forth by well meaning people. Thats its danger. Its a philosophy that cripples nations and their people. Keep in mind, Canada is not a socialist nation, but you have socialist constructs.
My main concern with the slide towards true socialism of communism is how is cripples its own people by not allowing them to truly be self-sufficient, even if they ant to be, and convinces them that they need to be taken care of instead of taking care of themselves. As Ben Franklin said:
`Poverty should be made so uncomfortable as to make it an intolerable state of being'. I hate progressive tax rates that keep people economically stagnant and inhibit the transfer of wealth from generation to generation, and severely punishes success that philisophically we should be celebrating. Also, we have to come to the realization that demonizing business only hurts ourselves as it is big business and free markets that provide Americans with their success. Basically, I hate any form of government that makes the assumption that we can't achieve as a nation unless the government holds out hand and guides us, because we're all pathetic idiots that need the help of those who know better than us.
But the worst part is that socialism involves taking choices away from people and placing them in the hands of a government, and that is not the governments place and is fundamentally oppressive, even if it is intended to help. "A hug is oppressive if you don't want to be hugged".
I could go on with more examples, but I'll leave you with the greatest: America, even now, over time has been the greatest force in the world economically and influentially and we enjoy the highest standard of living and the most freedom in the world as observed by independent research and observaton... yet we want to change everything fundamentally and abandon the tenants of the greatest governmental document ever written?
On face value this argument makes no sense. The power belongs with the people, not with the government, and I'm tired of how we are all so eager to hand over our rights to those who want to "take care of us" by limiting us and our expectations of ourselves.
EDIT: For my treatise of why socialism blows, please this this post I made a few years ago about Widget Inc.
http://www.gametavern.net/forums/sho...ight=socialist
Re: GameTavern Votes: Presidential Election 2008
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