A socialist USA?

Wow. And that's why you're a socialist...

And you might respond with the U.N. declaration of universal human rights...

... more often from the conscious indifference/corruption of the government, which has been bought and is being used a vehicle for private interests. "Well that dosen't sound like socialism," you say; the government could never have been such a vehicle had it not usurped so many powers, by which it can now manipulate everything!

Before I pop a blood vessel, let me stop and ask you a few quesstions ...

(1) Are you familiar with fractional reserve banking in general and the federal reserve system in particular, especially regarding its creation in 1913, and the reasons for its creation?

(2) Did you know that early advocates of Keynesian economics (before it was so called) were institutionalized in Europe as madmen? (...because what they were advocating was essentially a national pyramid scheme that could only end like all pyramid schemes)

(3) Do you understand how inflation works; how it is a redistribution of wealth, how much ordinary americans have suffered because of government overspending, and who their money went to via the 'inflation tax?'

All I've advocated here was keeping an open mind, regardless of how a particular action might be categorized as long as it is towards the goals we're trying to achieve.

You dirty capitalist pig, you.

Economics has to be pragmatic. For one, implementing a pure ideology is impossible. We have to examine the conditions and react accordingly, in a way which best preserves and promotes economic sustainability and promotes quality of life. Does this mean we have to give up freedom in the process? No. Unless, of course, you consider being taxed a limit on freedom. If taxes are a limit on freedom, then it's probably best to give up that pipe dream notion of freedom and get down to living in reality.

psychosocioeconomics

The idea that socialism some how restricts freedom is ridiculous. It can in certain forms, try to argue that the American economic system promotes freedom compared to what a more socialist version would. Socialize health care. People are freed from the uncertainties that the current system promotes (e.g. loss of insurance, non-coverage, unaccounted expenses, deductibles, hassles with the insurance company). Nationalize banks and the people are freed from bankers sucking money off the top or making money disappear into theory land where things don't always go as planned.

Remember freedom of choice is not the only freedom, and often times it is the least necessary. Freedom from uncertainty can be far more valuable and important in life than having the freedom to choose who will screw you over. I would argue that the typical American would have a greater sense of freedom with real socialism than with the corporate capitalist system of today. Most people are little more than slaves to the system.

Human valuation is far too complex and subjective for such economic calculation to be possible. Who can determine that belongingness ranks higher than physiological and safety. People who have all basic wants accounted for and more may still commit suicide at the loss of a spouse.

Exceptions are not to be used to generalize. Further, what is "far too complex" for you is much easier for those with a predilection for understanding human psychology.

Understanding how humans behave is crucial to designing any organizational system, including a government.

Of course, it seems your fear is total socialism, but I can't see one solitary reason for your fear. The US is the least inclined country on the planet to abandon personal freedoms, and we are still working on making so everybody is free, not just white men.

Is it fair that the rich get the best legal assistance? What does money have to do with justice? It is antithetical to our very deepest principles to be selling that, but that is exactly what we do.

The solution often proposed for the second problem is NO government, which makes no sense to me (unnecessary govt./admin. yes). Is that the solution we suggest for, say, an inefficient business?

I don't know if you have ever seen Gordon Ramsey's "Kitchen Nightmares," but he goes into badly managed restaurants and turns them around, often in the space of a week. The TV show "The Nanny" a woman straightens out mismanaged households in a couple of weeks. If we followed the philosophy of the "no-government-because-we-always-do-it-badly crowd, Ramsey would just go in and remove all management, and the Nanny would kick out the parents.

What the proper solution is, is to learn what good management is for a government, and we really are terrible at it. But that doesn't mean we should not learn to do it right, and that we should nix any program requiring sophisticated management methods because we've been admistrative nitwits in the past.

So socialist would have made such a bigger muck up of it...what a joke.

Hard to know, has there ever been a socialist economy of the size of any of the major players in the modern world? No, there hasn't -- all major economies in the world are capitalist to some degree or another.

Do we know if socialism would do any better? Well, I can tell you that Venezuela is economically collapsing right now because its economy is based on a nationalized oil industry with heavy social services, and with the fall in oil prices they can't maintain their government services and employment. There was a long article about this in the Economist from last week. Iran is suffering much the same fate for the exact same reason.

Maybe socialism would be better -- but maybe not. A socialist economy has less potential for growth, but probably more room to prevent a chain reaction from over-leveraging.

I don't understand why anyone is talking about total socialism versus total capitalism. Nobody yet has made either work by themselves, and I don't see the US ever turning to total socialism. Aren't we talking about trying out a bit more socialism like other countries have done? Consider this article by Prof. DeLong, "Social Democracy, Anyone?" at TomPaine.com TomPaine.com - Social Democracy, Anyone?

He begins by saying, "Almost all of the world's developed countries consider themselves, and are, social democracies: mixed economies with very large governments performing a wide array of welfare and social insurance functions, and removing large chunks of wealth and commodity distribution from the market. The United States is something different. Or is it? Whatever it has been in the past, the United States in the future will have to choose whether, and how much, it will be a social democracy."

So Iran is suffering for being a left wing socialist country , you are joking surely..So whats your point?

Freedom is a matter of choice. If one has a choice between two or more options, we say one is free. If a person has no choice and can only pursue one option, we say he is not free.

That's not what I said. Read again. Venezuela is a left wing socialist country, but it suffers the same fate as Iran because its economy and its government are 100% wedded to oil prices. So how has socialism helped?