Why are Americans so afraid of socialism?

People use Democratic Socialism as a leading reason why Bernie Sanders "can't win" the presidency in a general election. Reviewing US history and sporadic policies, it appears as though America already uses, effectively, several Democratic Socialist-leaning policies.

1. Do you think the last statement is true?
2. Do you think America is ready for a Democrat Socialist president?
Why or why not?

Why can't excessive financial profit be taken out of healthcare system? We would still have to of course pay reasonable cost for services and medicines according to our income through taxation, but why should some fat cat add millions to his stock portfolio profits just because you have health issues? Socialism has more than a financial meaning to me.... so lets just call it common sense.

Because college is expensive.

I think this is an issue:

Based on the types of people who populated America during pioneer years, we are, very generally, an independent bunch. We like to control where our money goes--or at least believe we do.

Socialism requires that we hand a big chunk over to our corrupt government and trust them to protect our interests with it.

Until there are pretty deep changes to the people we have in government, until we retire this disgusting generation of thieving dinosaurs, I don't think America will allow more Socialist processes.

There is a big difference in Socialists and Social democrats.

So, how would you determine a "reasonable cost" for services and medication?

They're afraid of it because of intense propaganda. For about 80 years the government has crated a virtual taboo on the discussion of socialism. Every trick imaginable has been used to trick Americans into fearing socialism and communism, and into fearing that they may look at least stupid, and at most treasonous, to bring up the subject seriously. The US is pretty much alone in this. In European countries you can walk into a school or tavern or barber shop and strike up a conversation about socialism with an intelligent response forthcoming. It's the propaganda.

I am 70 years old, probably an old timer for this group. In the 50's, the US was involved in a cold war with Russia, which was identified as a Communist country (it wasn't, but claimed to be). Communism was considered the ultimate form of socialism, so that socialism was painted with the brush of harsh state rule.

It actually goes back farther than the 50's. In the earlier part of the century, especially the 30's, the labor movement had the factory owners shitting their pants. The labor movement was aided by socialists and communists both, and the factory owners (more accurately the plutocrats of their day), had already started a propaganda war against all three groups (unions, communists, and socialists, pretty much in that order). Roosevelt's New Deal was sold to the plutocrats on the grounds that if "you don't give them some of what they want, they will take everything". Roosevelt claimed that his greatest achievement was that he saved capitalism.

The propaganda war has continued since the end of World War II because it is to the advantage of the plutocrats, and the plutocrats own all of the news media. If you watch the news and think you are well informed, you are only well propagandized.

As an example of how insidious the bastards are, remember that when the housing bubble burst and hundreds of thousands of people were losing their houses, every major news source could only talk about the impact on a handful of investors. No one even mentioned "Hey, let's do something for the victims" until well after it was too late. (As an aside, the Federal Reserve, or Fed, which engineered the "salvation of the economy" is not a government agency at all; it is a private cartel of private bankers which reports to congress occasionally. These greedy bastards are the ones who have your money printed. When the little ugly chairman - I forget his name just now - said that his intellectual mentor was Ayn Rand, I knew we were headed for the sewers).

People fear socialism because they have been taught that 1) socialism is evil and
opposed to both freedom and human nature, and 2) all socialists want to do is take everything you have and give it to the poor and shiftless. Remember, America is a Christian nation and Christianity has nothing significantly to do with the teachings of Jesus. Christianity was chosen as the national religion of Rome for political reasons, and it's main function has always been control of the rabble.

Yup. Propaganda, propaganda, propaganda. Most people don't know how propagandized they are.

I had to look twice to be sure I wasn't the one who wrote your post. I've said the same things. BTW I'm 70 too. There are plenty of us old farts on forums. I guess we have more time on our hands.

BTW Hibbitus, what state do you live in? I'm in Oregon.

Bullshit. Medicare has about 1/3 the administrative expenses of the private insurance industry. The US postal service delivers mail on time and reliably. Ever since I was a child, the gullible have been sold on the idea that the government was inept. As in most cases, the gullible don't look at any information (I have had friends berate me for bringing documented information into discussions).

And please explain just how the **** you knew what Jesus was thinking. In fact, he was the last (save possibly Maimonides) who preached the government's responsibility to the poor and the orphans. (The Jewish nation was a theocracy and there was no distinction between religious government and secular government).

I am a little tired of people telling me that Jesus didn't really mean what he said. They are saying in effect, "We are going to base our belief system on this man's teachings, but we are not going to pay any attention to what he actually said. In fact, we will forget about what we don't like, and then we will reinterpret the rest so that it will not inconvenience us unnecessarily. In that way, everything he said, reinforces our prejudices. And, when we pray, Jesus always tells us just what we want to hear.)

Either take him at his word, or stop the hypocracy of calling him your Lord. After all, the man was no idiot.

In the name of God, have you never read a book by a legitimate scholar. I'm not talking about Bill O'Reilly or Glen Beck, I'm talking about people who went to the trouble to be trained in their professions and who are engaged in legitimate research.
I am pretty sure you must be Republican. They are the only people I know of, who take pride in their ignorance and in their unwillingness to read anything more demanding than "Captain America".

Trump campaign promises of much better care, covering more people and lower costs from some new replacement for Obamacare have been shown to be absolutely impossible. Furthermore, most politicians on both sides have come to realize that Obamacare repeal in not feasible. It is also dawning on some politicians that there is no fix or repair of Obamacare that can bring the costs of healthcare in America down to anywhere near it is in the rest of the developed countries in terms of a percentage of GDP.

It is not as widely understood that the reason for the widely disparate healthcare costs between the USA and the other developed countries stems from the fact that demand for healthcare is inelastic. Demand for a good or service is inelastic if a percentage increase in price results in a smaller percentage decrease in the quantity demanded. Basic economics tells us that sellers facing inelastic demand will continuously raise prices until prices reach the elastic portion of the demand curve. Consequently, in every developed country in the world, all goods or services with inelastic demand have their prices regulated by government. Medical care in the USA being the only exception. As I said in the earlier article: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1647632

...Medical prices are controlled in various ways in the rest of the developed world. In Japan, the land of $100 melons and tiny $10,000 per month apartments, all medical care prices are listed in a book, thicker than the Manhattan telephone directory. The prices set in the book are usually less than a third of those in the USA. An MRI that costs $1,200 in the USA costs $88 in Japan. Japanese insurance companies are private as are most doctors. Japan spends less than a third per capita on medical care than America. However, the Japanese are greater consumers of medical care than Americans. They visit doctors and hospitals more often, have much more diagnostic tests such as MRIs. They also have better health outcomes as measured by all metrics such as life expectancy. They also wait less for treatment than Americans do as Japanese doctors work much longer hours for their much lower incomes.

Japan's explicit price controls are roughly emulated in other countries via the use monopsonistic systems. Monopsony, meaning "single buyer" is the flip side of monopoly. A monopolist sets prices above free market equilibrium. A monopsonist sets prices below free market equilibrium. It does not matter if there is an actual single payer or many buyers (or payers) whose prices are set by the government or by insurance companies in collusion with each other…

Single payer or socialized medicine has mostly been an anathema politically in America. Senator Bernie Sanders usually, at least publicly, demonstrates ignorance of the primary reason that that America spends twice as much per capita on healthcare as the other developed countries. He mostly blames high administrative costs in private sector insurance companies and healthcare providers. Sanders has convinced 16 Democratic Senators to co-sponsor his “Medicare- for- all” legislation. The last time Sanders introduced a “Medicare-for-all” bill in 2013, he had zero co-sponsors in the Senate. Circumstances have now made single payer not as toxic to many prominent Democrats. Additionally, Medicare-for-all does not sound as scary to many as single payer does.

usually first points to the only 2% administrative costs of Medicare. There are various problems with Medicare-for-all. Medicare has been plagued by fraud. It was said that at times there was a shortage of cocaine in South Florida, as so many former drug dealers switched to the relatively safer and much more lucrative occupation of organized Medicare fraud. There is also the fact that Medicare provides less benefits than Medicaid. Medicaid’s lower payments to providers limits the number of options in terms of choosing doctors for many poor people. However, many of those now on Medicaid might not appreciate having a wide choice of doctors when they cannot afford the copays or deductibles that they would incur by going to.

In theory, Medicaid-for-all would bring comprehensive coverage to all and would lower costs if the lower Medicaid payments to providers was retained. The opposition from healthcare providers to Medicaid-for-all would be even more intense than to Medicare-for-all, if payments to providers we at the Medicaid. In theory payments to providers in a Medicare or Medicaid for all system could be maintained at current market levels. However, notwithstanding the 2% administrative costs paying providers market levels rather than the monopsonistically derived much lower levels that the other counties allow, would not reduce health care costs significantly below that of twice the per capita costs in the other countries.

How Likely is a Medicare-for-all System?
Obviously, determining winners and losers from a Medicare-for-all system is a waste of time, if there is no possibility of such a system being adopted. Despite the severe opposition that any Medicare-for-all legislation will encounter, the fact that the number of sponsors in the senate has gone from one to seventeen, and the fact that every other industrialized country has adopted a monopsonistic healthcare cost control system must be considered. Presumably, there was significant opposition in those countries as well. There are other problems and issues with actual operation of Medicare- for-all, but my focus is on the likelihood of enactment and the implications for financial markets and economic conditions.
I cannot see any scenario where current Medicare beneficiaries are not given substantial economic incentives to support the new arrangement. Those are the only ones who have to be given enough if monopsonistic healthcare price control system such as Medicare-for-all has any chance of being enacted. After that, there are various interests that may or may not be given incentives or compensation to go along. Those incentives could be permanent or phased out over time.

There are two major obstacles that must be addressed before any Medicare-for-all legislation could have any chance of being enacted. One is the way it will be financed and two is what would be the status of current Medicare beneficiaries. The latter is the more interesting, in that potentially a powerful group could be switched from extreme opponents of it to allies.
The first reaction from many current Medicare beneficiaries to the idea of Medicare-for-all, might be related to the issue of others getting immediately what they have paid into for many years while they did not get any benefits. At minimum, current Medicare beneficiaries would chafe at the idea of having to pay new taxes to pay for Medicare-for-all, and getting anything for those taxes, other than the Medicare already have now.

The challenge of convincing younger people to pay taxes in return for not having to pay for medical care and/or health insurance premiums either directly or through their employers is surmountable. The USA spends about twice as much per person on health care as other developed countries. However, the prices paid by Americans or their insurance carriers for medical procedures are typically about triple what is paid in other developed countries. Hence, Americans consume less health care services than many of their foreign counterparts. The money saved from a monopsonistic healthcare cost control system like Medicare-for-all, could be allocated among those who now pay for healthcare, leaving almost all better-off, except doctors. Convincing many people of that would not be easy.
I said previously:

...Government spending has been increasingly driven by medical care prices. Government now pays about half of the costs of health care in the USA. When the tax spending aspects of the tax deductibility and exclusions of medical care and insurance expenses are included, the impact of health care costs on the deficits is even larger. In many respects, the health care price crisis in uniquely American. Our Government spending on healthcare per capita exceeds that of any other country in the world, including those where there are very little private health care expenditures.
Adopting the second worst healthcare system in the world, Canada, Germany and the UK are probable the best candidates for that dubious honor, would allow the USA to eliminate much of the Federal budget deficit. That would probably be beneficial to financial markets..."
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4111577

Because socialists maintain that everyone will benefit from being socialist when, in fact, even redistribution would result in total poverty. It also eliminates reward for work, which completely stagnates a society. Historically, socialism requires centralization of money and power with the assumption that those in power will be "fair" to all. Without the checks and balances of a Republic, this will inevitably lead to a totalitarian state. Their fears are well founded!

Prior to WWII, both the Socialist and the Communist party were fairly active in the labor movement, and they had the oligarachs (wealthier capatilists) shitting themselves (when the were not drooling from rage). After the war, the oligarchs began a smear campaign to associate communist Russia with socialism. The plan was to divide the nation into oligarchs, oligarch toadies, and an unwashed mass of people. The plan is laid out in the Powel memorandun and was implimented during the Reagan years. Fear of Socialism, was an important part of said plan and the oligarch propaganca stoolies cried that socialism was a slippery slope that led directly to Soviet style communism. The propoganda came from TV news, schools and colleges, and many of the politicians.

This entire diatribe can be summed up with: people are afraid of socialism because they don't know anything about it except what the oligarchs have told them.

What about it is unsustainable. The American Indians practiced it for thousands of years.

I grew up as a hillbilly in North Carolina. When I graduated college, I went to work in South Carolina. In fact, I worked to help the US win the cold war. If I had known that the Cock brothers would take over the country, I may have gone into something more lucrative.

If some of this is a repeat, I apologize. I had started to write this and fat-fingered something on the keyboard. I don't know if the message is somewhere in the ether or has been read by another member. I will start anew.

I assume from the Dr in your screen name that you are a doctor. Furthermore, given your ignorance of history, I assume that you are a physician instead of a real doctor. In which case, you have benefitted greatly from one of the few socialist experiments in the US which has lasted. I am talking about the AMA, the most powerful labor union in the US. The fact that you are not willing to share the benefits of your own socialistic system, makes me believe that you are a hypocrite who never paid any atttention to the Hypocratic oath.

Forgive me for making my last post about me. Please tell me a little about yourself. I don' tneed enough for the haters to to identify you, but It appears that we are of the same mind on this. (Remember, those who believe in Jesus, but who have not bothered to read what he said, hate the both of us.)

Socialism is a lot different!!!!! And you don't have as much freedom!!!

Jeepers, there's an educated answer.
I dunno, I live in a 'socialist' country, and I probably have more rights and freedoms than you do. But go you!!! lol