socialism and the standard of living

According to the United Nations Standard of Living Index, last updated in July 15, 2004, the United States is number 8 in terms of standard of living. The seven countries with higher standards of living have social democratic economies. These are often disdained by right wing ideologues in the United States as socialist.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200407/s1155013.htm

According to a Harris Poll released July 8, 2008, of ten countries, the other nine of which have socialized medicine, the U.S. health system is the least popular.
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=927

When condemning President Obama as a "socialist" right wing partisans need to consider that the Cold War is over. When Americans think of socialism, they are less likely to think of Cuba, than the countries of Western Europe. It is becoming increasingly difficult to portray these countries as horrible examples of socialism in practice.

Right wing partisans say Americans have more freedom than people in, let us say, Scandinavia. They should define what they mean by the term "freedom." If your boss has the freedom to fire you without warning and without cause, and if you will lose health coverage as a result, you need to ask yourself how you benefit.

 

It's funny,I don't even know what the word socialism means anymore.--The word has been twisted and turned in so many ways by extremists from both sides.---But yeah I agree with the basic premise of what you're saying.'Western European Style socialism is far better than Americas current system of' 'UNregulated capitalism' in other words socialism' for the rich.----The US "used" to be more like Western Europe than it is now--and thats when the US had one of the worlds highest standards of living.----

 

Also the Fox snooze version of the term socialism is only used for things that benefit the poor and middle classes.---When money is given,yes GIVEN to the rich in contemporary America it's called capitalism. A sidenote:I'm not a fan of CNN either,they are just as bad as Fox in a different way.

 

as lenin once said, "socialism is the first road towards communism"

 

Last point--If you look at military spending alone,the military is a government program right?Well that now makes the US the biggest socialist nation on the planet.So in conclusion far too many Americans are ignorant and clueless about how the rest of the free world is.

 

Yep. Dictators love to abuse social democracies and democracies everywhere. Sad truth.

 

Nations usually follow a particular path. Many start off as republics, then stealthfully become democracies, then "social" democracies, then socialist states, eventually resulting in communism or fascism. Really the only difference between a fascist state and a socialist/communist state is that one is controlled by corporations, while the other is controlled by bureaucrats (while ultimately still answering to the bankers and corporate elite at the top). The outcomes are largely the same -- death and enslavement for the many, with a small group of elites living in luxury at the top.

Regarding Obama, I don't consider him to be a socialist, and I think that's somewhat misleading, even though he is doing what Bush and others did by further consolidating power in the hands of the corporate-controlled state. Obama is a globalist like Bush and all the others. This charge of "socialism" is mainly being used by the taking heads on the right to create polarization. Obama is really simply a corporate fascist who is controlled by Wall Street and London. He doesn't work for the interests of the people, but the banks and transnationals.

As far as the social democracies -- countries like Sweden, which pay 55% income tax -- and their standard of living, we must first ask what "standard of living" is based on. It's usually based not on the status of the national economy, the buying power of the currency, its Gross National Product, or the number of people employed. It's based on the measure of equality in wealth redistribution.

The social democracies of the EU, much like the US, are fast on the road to totalitarianism, with ever increasing Orwellian laws and taxes, except in a lot of ways even more so. Socialism works via an incremental process. It's always forwarded under the guise of helping people, but as the government begins to centralize more power and confiscate more of the people's wealth in taxes, there is an encroachment upon people's freedoms and rights, until eventually the government becomes so overbloated that the people have absolutely no say whatsoever and they're living in a dictatorship.

 

It's not "unregulated." It's simply regulated in favor of the corporations and is designed to slowly suck the wealth from the people under the hidden tax of inflation and return it to the bankers. That's what the Federal Reserve does when it prints money out of thin air.

The term socialism has been twisted for a reason. If people don't know what socialism is, which is simply state control, and they believe we have a "free market" economy, which we don't, people are going to be likely to base all the problems of the economy on this non-existent "free market." So this will create a reaction in the public mind that something must be done by allowing even more meddling of the economy that created this situation to begin with.

The current economic crisis did not simply happen on its own. They made it happen, and they will use this crisis to their advantage, to gain even more power and control.

It's the typical problem-reaction-solution scenario they have always used to consolidate power by offering the solutions to the problems they create to justify those solutions.

 

He may have said that, but he also said "communism is socialism in a hurry."

In other words, communism is achieved by revolution, whereas socialism is achieved by consensus and through a more gradual means.

 

France is moving toward capitalism from socialism while we are moving toward socialism from capitalism/coporatism. All roads don't lead to communism. Even China's moving away from communism.

I think it's more about getting the right balance.

Also, if Obama is run by the rich/corporations then why is he raising their taxes?

 

What does increasing taxes have to do with Obama being controlled by the rich? If you don't think he's controlled by the elite, then just look at every single member of his cabinet. Look at where his campaign contributions come from.

Most people don't realize that the income tax goes to paying off the interest on the debt owed to the private bankers of the Federal Reserve. Everything else simply comes out of debt. In other words, the Federal Reserve simply prints up more money and loans it to the government (at interest). The US government never actually has the money it spends, it simply barrows that money from the Fed, which is then added to the existing debt.

How is France moving towards capitalism? Because Sarkozy is in power?

The US is moving in the direction of socialism and corporatism simultaneously (it has been for decades). While taxpayer money is being used to bail out the corporations (corporatism), government is becoming bigger under the pretense that it's to manage the problems created by the economic crisis (socialism). So at the top you have corporatism, but closer to the bottom it's socialism.

And yes, China is the one exception in that they are moving away from communism and becoming more capitalist. Meanwhile the West in moving in the opposite direction.

 

Except Canada. We're actually moving away from Socialism.

 

With the exception of Czechoslovakia, which was occupied by the Soviet Army at the time, the only countries that have ever "gone Communist" have been dictatorships with primitive economies. Between the two world wars Italy and Germany developed totalitarian dictatorships on the right, but neither had a sound tradition of representative democracy. Now they do. I certainly do not think we need to worry about a dictatorship in any of the Scandinavian countries.

 

I looked up that quote on the internet, but I could not find it.

In The Communist Manifesto Karl Marx went to some length to contrast socialism negatively with communism.

This is what Fredrick Engles wrote, "Thus, in 1847, socialism was a middle-class movement, communism a working-class movement. Socialism was, on the Continent at least, 'respectable'; communism was the very opposite. And as our notion, from the very beginning, was that 'the emancipation of the workers must be the act of the working class itself,' there could be no doubt as to which of the two names we must take. Moreover, we have, ever since, been far from repudiating it."
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html

 

I never said anything about a dictatorship in the Scandinavian countries, but rather the EU countries, some of which happen to be Scandinavian. Keep in mind that countries signed on to the EU are subordinate to Brussles, as the national governments are overridden by the EU's supranational government, which passes most of its laws (70-80%) by simply rubber stamping regulations written up by nameless, unelected bureaucrats in Brussles and Luxembourg.

They are now attempting to do the same thing with the North American countries under the SPP/NAU. It's just another step towards global governance and a one world currency and banking system, which is now openly being talked about in the media.

I don't see a dictatorship of any one or even a dozen countries on the horizon. I see a world dictatorship on the horizon. The European countries are more openly socialist, but they're still heading in the same direction as the US when you look at some of the laws being passed, on top of the police and surveillance state, which is every bit as prevalent in Europe as it is here.

But this all sounds crazy to you, right?

 

Since you ask, it does. You are indulging in the slippery slope fallacy:

"In debate or rhetoric, a slippery slope (also the thin edge of the wedge or the camel's nose) is a classical informal fallacy. A slippery slope argument states that a relatively small first step inevitably leads to a chain of related events culminating in some significant impact."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

 

But the quote I posted by Lenin, about communism being socialism in a hurry, he did in fact say.

Also, if you reread that quote you posted, you would see that Engles is not condemning communism. He was saying that socialism was simply the more preferred title because it sat better with the masses, being "respectable" and all.

It's a bit like this comment made by Norman Thomas, the former head of the Socialist Party in the US, in 1944:

“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of 'liberalism,' they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

 

The fact is, not every country is marching towards communism, even if they are socialist.

 

No, they are marching towards global governance, which essentially will be a communistic form of government.

 

How do you know? When you quote someone you should attribute it to a source one can look up.