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Socialism, Should we give it another try?

 
 
Einherjar
 
  1  
Reply Sun 21 Nov, 2004 04:54 am
Alright, translating to actual policies.

I'm guessing you (Etruscia) consider the following socialist policies:

Free healthcare (high spending)

Free education (high spending)

Governmental social security (extensive coverage and high benefits)

work-environment regualation (highly restrictive)

Progressive taxation (very progressive)

All of these apply to Scandinavia. And yes we do top living conditions rankings, and are high teck. Did I miss any policies?
0 Replies
 
Einherjar
 
  1  
Reply Sun 21 Nov, 2004 05:09 am
kflux wrote:
"free enterprise socialism"
is an oxymoron , once you have free enterprise , and free elections , it is no longer socilism, by my definition . a rose by any other name , USA defines it's self as a capitalist nation , yet dose take part of the peoples money to pay for social programs. there is no 100% socilist or capitalist country . It is a matter of degree , most of the money should , in my opinion remain in the pockets of the privet citizens , if a government follows that policy , it leans toward capitalism , no matter what you choose to call it . History has taught us that socilism is a very slippery slope , as cold as it may sound , money is power , i'd rather have most of that money in the hands of the people than the government.


This is why I keep asking people to provide their definition of socialism. Everyone has their pet definition, and no consensus exist as to the meaning of this label. You define it as governmental ownership of assets, he defines it as left leaning policies. (a vague definition if ever there was one) The validity of these definitions are neither debatable nor signifficant. Lets focus on the content you wish to fit within this label, and debate speciffics.

Quote:
BYW i have just been wondering , dose most of Europe really hate Americans as much as they seem to on TV , i don't mean to start a whole new debate , it's an innocent question?


How much do we seem to hate the US on TV? We probably hate religiously inspired legislation and curiculums more than we apear to, and violations of international law as much as we appear to, but we do not generally extrapolate these extreeme manifestations of right wing american culture to be representative of your nation.
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georgeob1
 
  1  
Reply Sun 21 Nov, 2004 09:45 am
Norway has been blessed for the last two decades with enormous income from the North Sea oil fields. This has made the difference in prevailing living standards there - not the high tax, social welfare policies of its government. Thirty years ago Stavanger was a pleasant, but slightly rundown, picturesque little town. What a difference the oil money has made!

It is true that the Scandanavian countries generally have succeeded in developing successful social welfare programs that have not yet choked off economic activity. However I doubt they are a useful model for the rest of the developed world. They are very homogenious societies that have worked hard to exclude foreign cultural influences. Immigration policies in Sweden and Norway are highly restrictive, even by European standards. Greenhouse flowers.
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Etruscia
 
  1  
Reply Sun 21 Nov, 2004 11:16 am
Einherjar, yes. Those policies are which i would cosider those socialist policies and which make a country not socialist in terms of completely government run, but high government involvement, progressive tax and high spending on healthcare and education. I know it is a vague and not all encompassing definiton, but it is just how i picture it.
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kflux
 
  1  
Reply Sun 21 Nov, 2004 11:46 am
It is a common misconception , that the extreme right wing control american politics . what is really going on , in my opinion , is that the center of our country feels that the left wing has gotten out of control , so we are voting for the right inorder to bring things back into balance . When the right gose to far , witch anyone with power usually dose , we will start voting for more left wing polices again . I could go on and on about how the left has lost it's mind in this country but thats a whole new debate , and i'd like to try to stay on topic . the left in the US just needs to regroup , and come back to a reasonable center .

to Answer "how much de we seem to hate the US on TV" . well , i do realise that the most extreme actions always make the front page , So if you look to the most extream antiamerican protest and statements comeing from Europe , that is almost all that we see right now . It is important that both sides know what the center is thinking , something the world media ignores allot of the time . looking at the common ground between nations is what makes peace possible , not looking at extremist on either side.
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Etruscia
 
  1  
Reply Sun 21 Nov, 2004 12:09 pm
Well the only reason I think that the U.S. is somewhat controlled by the right is because the right is relative. In Canada I would equate more central occupying democrats(in the U.S.) with our right winged conservatives.
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nimh
 
  1  
Reply Sun 21 Nov, 2004 12:34 pm
I'm one of those big on distinguishing socialism from communism. Socialists are indeed typically for free elections, for example (in re: to a post just above). But since any discussion of socialism with Americans tends to often get to be about communism, instead, I just found this quote that I thought represents communism perfectly ... thought I'd post it here ...

Elsewhere, I'm quoting from Anne Applebaum's tome on the Gulag - and it includes this description of what a typical arrival at one of the Gulag's camps would look like - and it mentions that "the first thing the prisoners saw on arrival was their camp's gate. More often than not, the gate displayed a slogan." One of the slogans she mentions is the one that adorned the Solovetsky camp's gate in 1933 - and it says it all, really:

"With an Iron Fist, We Will Lead Humanity to Happiness!"
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Einherjar
 
  1  
Reply Mon 22 Nov, 2004 03:24 pm
georgeob1 wrote:
Norway has been blessed for the last two decades with enormous income from the North Sea oil fields. This has made the difference in prevailing living standards there - not the high tax, social welfare policies of its government. Thirty years ago Stavanger was a pleasant, but slightly rundown, picturesque little town. What a difference the oil money has made!


Some 95 % of Norwegian oil revenue is invested rather than spent. The vast majority of the oil money now resides in the oil fund, invested in markets across the world. Hydropower was more important in industrializing and modernizing the country, and the fish industry, while it does not produce the revenues of the oil industry, provided a lot of jobs back in the days, still provide quite a few.

Sweden and Denmark have done without these resources though, and have achieved results similar to ours with policies similar to ours. Afraid you will have to come up with a better parry than "the oil did it".

georgeob1 wrote:
It is true that the Scandanavian countries generally have succeeded in developing successful social welfare programs that have not yet choked off economic activity. However I doubt they are a useful model for the rest of the developed world. They are very homogenious societies that have worked hard to exclude foreign cultural influences. Immigration policies in Sweden and Norway are highly restrictive, even by European standards. Greenhouse flowers.


How would increased immigration spoil our domestic policies?

Quote:
Einherjar, yes. Those policies are which i would cosider those socialist policies and which make a country not socialist in terms of completely government run, but high government involvement, progressive tax and high spending on healthcare and education. I know it is a vague and not all encompassing definiton, but it is just how i picture it.


The scandinavian countries fit this mold.

kflux wrote:
It is a common misconception , that the extreme right wing control american politics . what is really going on , in my opinion , is that the center of our country feels that the left wing has gotten out of control , so we are voting for the right inorder to bring things back into balance.


The Democrats are slightly right of center by an international standard, and are loosing elections to a right of right wing party, thus the US is controlled by the extreme right.

kflux wrote:
to Answer "how much de we seem to hate the US on TV" . well , i do realise that the most extreme actions always make the front page , So if you look to the most extream antiamerican protest and statements comeing from Europe , that is almost all that we see right now . It is important that both sides know what the center is thinking , something the world media ignores allot of the time . looking at the common ground between nations is what makes peace possible , not looking at extremist on either side.


Yes, you people appear rabidly anti-european as well. Europeans are pretty much in line with the Democrats on most issues, we wish you well, but might not quite agree with you about what well would be. While the vast majority disagree with your more controversial policies, only a small minority would want to see you enter another recession in order to prevent you from continuing those policies.

The vast majority consider guantanamo to violate international law (doesn't really matter to people wether there is a loophole, geneva is supposed to secure a minimum of humane treatment, and violating it, even if it is legal, does not ring well in these parts.) We also object to Iraq over legality issues. Your Iraq policy is viewed as rash and impatient, and a large majority of us are convinced that Bush lied leading up to the war.

People also find the religious undertones in politics disturbing, or at least ridiculous. exessive nationalism is also sometimes criticized, the american "sofa patriot" is a popular caricature.

We do distinguish between US policy and the US though, at least most of us do.

nimh wrote:
I'm one of those big on distinguishing socialism from communism. Socialists are indeed typically for free elections, for example (in re: to a post just above). But since any discussion of socialism with Americans tends to often get to be about communism, instead, I just found this quote that I thought represents communism perfectly ... thought I'd post it here ...


Communism is a social order where people are organised in a number of communities, "communes", with territorial borders drawn between communities. These communities are free to trade with each other. Within each community work and benefits are distributed according to the "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" principle.

Socialism is used both of the governmental structure of the USSR and the economic policies of the USSR. This regime styled itself socialist, and considered itself a prelude to a communist social order. Socialism is also used by some to describe policies aimed at wealth redistribution, and improving workingconditions. It is used by others to describe govenmental social security systems, and by others yet again to describe high governmental spending in areas such as of healthcare and education.

I gave up pinning down the definition of socialism a long time ago, and have instead taken to parroting "how do you define socialism?" whenever the topic comes up.

Love the quote by the way.

eddited for spelling multiple times (what is the matter with the spell checker?)
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Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Mon 22 Nov, 2004 03:33 pm
Very good post, Einherjar!
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Einherjar
 
  1  
Reply Mon 22 Nov, 2004 04:01 pm
Thanks Very Happy
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georgeob1
 
  1  
Reply Mon 22 Nov, 2004 07:07 pm
Perhaps Einherjar is making a distinction here without a difference. Apart from the government-controlled petroleum industry, Norway is a capitalist country, but with substantial social welfare programs and high taxation after the Scandinavian model (for all I know the oil revenues or income from the petroleum fund may significantly reduce the level of taxation relative to Sweden and Denmark.} Moreover I believe the government has been divesting itself of industrial properties in an effort to grow the private sector of the economy.

The Petroleum Fund which last year had assets equal to about 50% of one year's GDP will, as Einherjar noted, reduce the impact of the lost oil revenues when that resource is depleted in a couple of decades. Currently the GDP per capita in Norway is about equal to that in the United States, though some sources in subjectively rating the overall average quality of life rank Norway as a leader in the world. .Standards here in the USA are more variable, but overall I would prefer a Month in Monterey California to one in (say) Bergen, though I would prefer Bergen to (say) Cleveland.

The relatively generous social welfare systems that prevail throughout most of Western Europe, generally face serious and immediate financial and demographic problems due to declining working age populations, inflexible labor markets, and stagnant economies. Relative to their European neighbors, the Scandinavian countries appear to have far less of these problems, although the reasons for this are not clear to me. Norway has a decidedly younger population and a higher birth rate than Sweden, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy - that may explain some of Norway's advantage. The United States has a population that is younger than Norway's by about the same margin as Norway's relative to the European average - the same applies to birth rates. On a per capita basis the United States has more than three times the rate of legal immigration as Norway and substantial illegal immigration in addition. Our social benefits are less generous, our labor markets much more flexible, and our GDP growth rate is several times that of all the major Western European nations, Norway included.

The conclusion here is that a comparison between the United States and Norway does not demonstrate anything about Socialism, because neither country is Socialist. Moreover I do not see in all this a convincing basis on which to conclude even that the generous social welfare programs, inflexible labor markets, and higher taxes that prevail in Europe generally and in Norway in particular, are necessarily a superior way to produce and distribute wealth. I'm not claiming that our system is necessarily better - only that we have evaluated and chosen the tradeoffs differently. The overall differences between Norway and the U.S.are very small compared to others that exist in the world.

Though I can't prove it, I strongly suspect the relative lack of immigration has indeed been a factor in the maintenance of stable social contracts in the Scandinavian countries. This and the reduced initial burden on social welfare systems could well be significant factors in their relative success with their welfare systems.

Overall I must note that from Russia to Eastern Europe, to post-colonial Africa, India, China, and many other places, the economic (and social) performance of Socialist systems have been so uniformly bad that it is truly remarkable that anyone would seriously consider even another look at it. "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us" was the cynical joke in the USSR. I think that says it all.
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nimh
 
  1  
Reply Mon 22 Nov, 2004 07:25 pm
Einherjar wrote:
Communism is a social order where people are organised in a number of communities, "communes", with territorial borders drawn between communities. These communities are free to trade with each other. Within each community work and benefits are distributed according to the "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" principle.

Socialism is used both of the governmental structure of the USSR and the economic policies of the USSR. This regime styled itself socialist, and considered itself a prelude to a communist social order. Socialism is also used by some to describe policies aimed at wealth redistribution, and improving workingconditions. It is used by others to describe govenmental social security systems, and by others yet again to describe high governmental spending in areas such as of healthcare and education.

I gave up pinning down the definition of socialism a long time ago, and have instead taken to parroting "how do you define socialism?" whenever the topic comes up.

I tend to take party-formation as the basis for definition, since anything else exists only in the realm of intellectual exercise.

Communist parties only emerged after the 1917 Russian Revolution (or coup d'etat), and I thus would define "communism" as the ideology practiced in the states those parties were, throughout most of their existence, loyal to and which they, throughout most of their existence, projected as the model/example to follow.

Ie, "communism" to me is both the reality of the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc states and the ideology of the communist parties elsewhere.

I am aware that, in terms of Marxist-Leninist ideology, "communism" in fact is defined as the ultimate state of fulfillment of the ideal, a point in the future thus*. I am also aware that the term "communism" goes back further than 1917. But in terms of political organisation, communist politics has always been aligned with the reality of Eastern Europe, with only the burgeoning "Eurocommunism" devised in Italy in the ideology's waning days as a current that gradually tried to distance itself from it.

"Socialism", on the other hand, is much broader than what was practiced in the Soviet Union and its satellite states.

Hell, French PM Francois Mitterand was a socialist. So was Spanish PM Felipe Gonzalez. The Greeks have been governed by Socialists for much of the past twenty years. The British Labour Party carried socialism in its banner until just a few years (OK, a decade or so) ago. In Holland, while the Communist Party professed loyalty to the Soviet leadership up to the late seventies (or some 10 years before its dissolution), the Pacifist Socialist Party took a principled opposition to both capitalism and Soviet communism.

Furthermore, the Communist regime in the Soviet Union actively persecuted the members of socialists parties, like the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries. A great many socialists around the world were strident anti-communists.

So I would do it the other way round. For you to equate "socialism" with the Soviet states but "communism" not, seems wholly counterinstinctual to me.



*Soviet joke: For days on end, Oleg listened as his teacher extolled the virtues of communism, which as sure as daylight was "appearing on the horizon". On his way home he thought a lot about it. Then one day, he asked his teacher: what is an horizon? The horizon, the teacher answered? The horizon is the line you see over yonder, that seems so close by but that distances itself in the same pace as you approach it. Ah, the boy nodded. I see.
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Einherjar
 
  1  
Reply Mon 22 Nov, 2004 07:51 pm
I tend to want to lable people and movements what they lable themselves. The adherents of communism had this term clearly defined, and I would tend to stick with that. Socialism however is claimed both by modern day social democrats to describe their preffered policies, and by the communists to describe the radically different society they created.



Anyway...

Arguments over definitions are useless, and I will adapt to whichever terminology is preffered by those with whom I am discussing.
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Einherjar
 
  1  
Reply Mon 22 Nov, 2004 08:45 pm
georgeob1 wrote:
Perhaps Einherjar is making a distinction here without a difference. Apart from the government-controlled petroleum industry, Norway is a capitalist country, but with substantial social welfare programs and high taxation after the Scandinavian model (for all I know the oil revenues or income from the petroleum fund may significantly reduce the level of taxation relative to Sweden and Denmark.} Moreover I believe the government has been divesting itself of industrial properties in an effort to grow the private sector of the economy.


Taxation is approximately equal to that of Sweden and Denmark. And yes, government has been selling off hydroplants. (I'd rather we keep them myself)

Quote:
The Petroleum Fund which last year had assets equal to about 50% of one year's GDP will, as Einherjar noted, reduce the impact of the lost oil revenues when that resource is depleted in a couple of decades. Currently the GDP per capita in Norway is about equal to that in the United States, though some sources in subjectively rating the overall average quality of life rank Norway as a leader in the world. .Standards here in the USA are more variable, but overall I would prefer a Month in Monterey California to one in (say) Bergen, though I would prefer Bergen to (say) Cleveland.


Oil might last longer than you think, norwegian oil companies are developing subsea drilling techniques which will make drilling cheaper, making it financially sound to tap into sources which would not otherwise be exploited. Unlike oilrigs, soon to be a thing of the past, the subsea oilwells will also be sufficiently small to be transported between fields. Chemical research is also looking promising, we will be able to increase output from "empty" wells by injecting certain agents into the wells dissolving the oil and others increasing pressure.

There are still oil left to be discovered in the north sea as well.

Quote:
The relatively generous social welfare systems that prevail throughout most of Western Europe, generally face serious and immediate financial and demographic problems due to declining working age populations, inflexible labor markets, and stagnant economies.


True, I think retirement age should be raised. I would also like to see unemployment benefits be made available to both unemployed and employed people, (but not people who are not seeking employment) replacing minimum wage. This could be entirely financed by taxes in the lower taxbrackets. Should put an end to unemployment as we know it.

Quote:
Relative to their European neighbors, the Scandinavian countries appear to have far less of these problems, although the reasons for this are not clear to me. Norway has a decidedly younger population and a higher birth rate than Sweden, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy - that may explain some of Norway's advantage.


I'm not sure about this, but I think we might be financing social security trough incometaxes. And I think Sweden might be trying to pre-finance their social security. Their politicians have all been talking about it for some time at least.

Quote:
The United States has a population that is younger than Norway's by about the same margin as Norway's relative to the European average - the same applies to birth rates. On a per capita basis the United States has more than three times the rate of legal immigration as Norway and substantial illegal immigration in addition. Our social benefits are less generous, our labor markets much more flexible, and our GDP growth rate is several times that of all the major Western European nations, Norway included.


gdp growth tends to follow population growth to an extent.

Quote:
The conclusion here is that a comparison between the United States and Norway does not demonstrate anything about Socialism, because neither country is Socialist.


Somebody just defined socialism in a way that applied to scandinavia.(It might be a good idea to split this thread in two, one concerning communism, the other concerning socialism, as defined by nimh.)

Quote:
Moreover I do not see in all this a convincing basis on which to conclude even that the generous social welfare programs, inflexible labor markets, and higher taxes that prevail in Europe generally and in Norway in particular, are necessarily a superior way to produce and distribute wealth. I'm not claiming that our system is necessarily better - only that we have evaluated and chosen the tradeoffs differently. The overall differences between Norway and the U.S.are very small compared to others that exist in the world.


Sure, and I belive this thread was intended to debate those tradeoffs.

Norway does not compete on equal terms with the US though, Europe still has internal trade barriers, and Norway is not a member of the EU. We do have trade agreements, but many tradebarriers have yet to fall. First off I think we should give up on our useless agriculture in return for access to the european fish market.

Quote:
Though I can't prove it, I strongly suspect the relative lack of immigration has indeed been a factor in the maintenance of stable social contracts in the Scandinavian countries. This and the reduced initial burden on social welfare systems could well be significant factors in their relative success with their welfare systems.


Reduced initial burden?

Quote:
Overall I must note that from Russia to Eastern Europe, to post-colonial Africa, India, China, and many other places, the economic (and social) performance of Socialist systems have been so uniformly bad that it is truly remarkable that anyone would seriously consider even another look at it. "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us" was the cynical joke in the USSR. I think that says it all.


Nobody's defending the USSR. I might defend certain of their principles, but I would have to completely rearrange other policies in order to make them work.
0 Replies
 
georgeob1
 
  1  
Reply Mon 22 Nov, 2004 09:56 pm
Based on your description, I believe our Social Security System is funded similarly to that in Sweden. Our relatively open immigration practices have admitted large numbers of people who immediately claim benefits, long before they have paid in to the system - hence "initial burden". (We are now becoming stricter in controlling immigration, however, compared to most developed countries our borders are open.)

I agree with you about GDP following population trends to an extent. In terms of GDP per capita Norway has very significantly closed the gap with the United States in the last several decades, and my impression is that oil had a lot to do with the change - along with a distinctive Norwegian tradition of self-reliance and enterprise. Intelligent development of hydropower and the fishing & fish farming industries have played big roles as well, just as you described. I traveled extensively in Norway twenty-five years ago (from Tromso to Trondheim, Stavanger and Oslo - then known as the biggest village in Europe.), and then again two years ago. Enormous changes were evident everywhere.

The principal difference between Norway and the States, as I saw it, is that everyone in Norway is - Norwegian, and shares a substantial common culture and view of the world. This is not true of the United States. Many of the parents and most of the grandparents of my boyhood friends were born in other countries and many spoke different languages at home - Italian, Polish, Greek, Hungarian, Slovak, Lithuanian, Yiddish, several varieties of Spanish, and many others. (Farther west there were lots of Swedes and Norwegians - though we called them all Swedes,) A necessary (I believe) part of our adaptation to these circumstances is that we are a very competitive and individualistic society. We value individual ownership and enterprise more than collective achievement and we are suspicious of government controls. These attitudes fly in the face of many of the successful collective and governmental achievements you have so proudly described here.

As a result we have chosen different approaches to many of these social and economic questions. It is worth remembering that the United States is largely the creation of Europeans who fled Europe seeking an alternative to their own history. The residue of that state of mind still lives here. For all of it we are a good deal more creative, adventurous and youthful both in spirit and age (4 years) than Europeans. That has both good and bad effects, but overall we have not done badly at all.

I can think of very little that was good about the USSR. Their science was, except for metallurgy and a few areas of mathematics, quite inferior, and even their military technology was quite substandard - often brilliant in conception, but always shoddy in execution. Their submarines had extremely high power densities, and were very fast, but they broke down frequently and we could hear them hundreds of kilometers away. When we finally got our hands on a MIG-25 we were intensely interested to find how they had packed so much engine thrust and power in an airframe of that size and capable of such speed. We found that the service life of the engine was about 20 hours!! (We considered 20,000 hours a practical minimum.)
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Einherjar
 
  1  
Reply Mon 22 Nov, 2004 11:51 pm
georgeob1 wrote:
Based on your description, I believe our Social Security System is funded similarly to that in Sweden. Our relatively open immigration practices have admitted large numbers of people who immediately claim benefits, long before they have paid in to the system - hence "initial burden". (We are now becoming stricter in controlling immigration, however, compared to most developed countries our borders are open.)


And this of course limits social security. Make the benefits too substantial and you will be flooded by immigrants.

I suppose a lot of Norwegians, me included, tend to prefer outsourcing to work imigration, partly for this reason.

Quote:
As a result [of being diverse and individualistic] we have chosen different approaches to many of these social and economic questions. It is worth remembering that the United States is largely the creation of Europeans who fled Europe seeking an alternative to their own history. The residue of that state of mind still lives here. For all of it we are a good deal more creative, adventurous and youthful both in spirit and age (4 years) than Europeans. That has both good and bad effects, but overall we have not done badly at all.


Sure, I belive the huge free market, under a single currency, is the key to your success, and I have great hopes for the EU if they can only get rid of the remaining trade barriers.


Quote:
I can think of very little that was good about the USSR. Their science was, except for metallurgy and a few areas of mathematics, quite inferior, and even their military technology was quite substandard - often brilliant in conception, but always shoddy in execution. Their submarines had extremely high power densities, and were very fast, but they broke down frequently and we could hear them hundreds of kilometers away. When we finally got our hands on a MIG-25 we were intensely interested to find how they had packed so much engine thrust and power in an airframe of that size and capable of such speed. We found that the service life of the engine was about 20 hours!! (We considered 20,000 hours a practical minimum.)


What I tried to say was that I considered some of their ideas worth salvaging. I think government should guarantee work shelter and a living wage.

I would personally like to se the equivalent of a living wage paid by government to every employed person in the nation, and every unemployed person looking for work. I would then like to loose the minimum wage, allowing businesses to hire people for free even, just on the threat of taking away unemploymentbenefits if the job was turned down. Expenses should be covered in the lower taxbrackets, meaning most people would cover their own "government subsidy". This should secure everyone who wanted to a living wage, while stimulating business. We have actually been pretty successfull in keeping unemployment to a minimum even with a high minimum wage, and I think this would get rid of it completely. Wouldn't take a lot of administration either.

We already have government guarantied basic housing. Not the best neighborhoods, but at least nobody's sleeping on the streets.

I'm also a big fan of government subsidized daycare, which help get parents working, and free healthcare, eliminates incentive for doctors to "sell" you treatment you don't need, and eliminates paperwork. (we have this Smile )

I consider a well funded public scool extremely important and oppose any kind of vouchers. I consider equal education a cornerstone in the foundation of equal oportunity. Children should have the oportunity to suceed regardless of their parents.

And finally collective ownership of capital. I think this is basically a good idea, much more fair than allowing capital to be controlled by a small superrich minority. I am also in favor of heavy estate taxes, as inheritance is basically unfair. I think it should still be possible to run a market economy without private ownership of capital, but it would be tricky to set up. I touched on this near the beginning of the thread.


Othervice I agree with what you've said.
0 Replies
 
georgeob1
 
  1  
Reply Tue 23 Nov, 2004 01:15 am
We differ on the most fundamental level.

I value freedom much more highly than the merits of (forcibly) removing the homeless from the streets to government subsidized basic housing in poor neighborhoods.

I doubt your ability (or anyone else's either) to plan and operate a system of subsidies and incentives, such as you describe, that will truly achieve its intended purpose without being corrupted by the excessive power given to those who operate it. History reveals numerous examples of this and, more importantly, no counterexamples.

I know of no successful application of an economic system based in public ownership of capital, anywhere in the world, at any time in history. Ultimately force and coercion are required to make the system work even at a low level. Freedom and private ownership and enterprise have beaten command economies and tyranny in every encounter.

The measures you propose for education would make the state the effective parent of all children. This is not particularly new. Sparta tried it and Plato advocated it. Neither was the highest achievement of classical Greece. Mankind is not perfectible. Those who undertake to try this end up as tyrants.

The contrast between the social theories of the Soviets and the ghastly actions they took to put and keep their dysfunctional system in place was so stark, that I think no reasonable person could advocate repeating it. Even in the earliest days Lenin was blithely willing to proceed with the , "Elimination of the irreconcilables",.as he termed the murder of those who resisted or wouldn't go along.
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nimh
 
  1  
Reply Tue 23 Nov, 2004 09:17 am
Einherjar wrote:
I tend to want to lable people and movements what they lable themselves.

So do I. That was my point. Yes, "The adherents of communism had this term clearly defined", in their theoretic handbooks, as the future end result/goal of the development of a socialist society of their brand. However, that did not stop them from founding parties across Europe called "Communist Party" - not, mostly, "Socialist Party". Note that the ruling party in the Soviet Union was, yes, the "Communist Party of the Soviet Union" (KPSS).

Communists are those who called themselves communists, sure, "I would tend to stick with that", too. Throughout most of Europe and most of the twentieth century, that has meant that "communists" - ie, those who organised in and voted for Communist parties - were those who were loyal to the Soviet Union and the Soviet model. Whereas most Socialist parties across free Europe did *not* profess any loyalty to or even affinity with the Soviet model.

Einherjar wrote:
Arguments over definitions are useless, and I will adapt to whichever terminology is preffered by those with whom I am discussing.

And as someone from a socialist family and with strong socialist affinities, I will continue to speak up against anyone who equates socialism with communism, or who defines socialism as the system practiced in the Soviet Union.
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Cycloptichorn
 
  1  
Reply Tue 23 Nov, 2004 12:01 pm
Quote:
The measures you propose for education would make the state the effective parent of all children. This is not particularly new. Sparta tried it and Plato advocated it. Neither was the highest achievement of classical Greece. Mankind is not perfectible. Those who undertake to try this end up as tyrants.


No, the highest achievements of classical Greece came from a society in which the males had all sorts of time to theorize, philosophize, and drink and party, thanks to the extremely hard work of their subjugated female class.

Sound familiar?

Cycloptichorn
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Tue 23 Nov, 2004 01:18 pm
nimh wrote:
Throughout most of Europe and most of the twentieth century, that has meant that "communists" - ie, those who organised in and voted for Communist parties - were those who were loyal to the Soviet Union and the Soviet model. ...


That certainly started as early as the 80's of 19th century.

What always puzzles me in these days is that certain US-Americans have such a high opinion about e.g. Tony Blair and such a low of e.g. Gerhard Schröder:

Tony Blair is the leader of the major democratic socialist party in Britain since the early 20th century.
Gerhard Schröder was (until recently) the leader of Social-Democratic Party, Germany's oldest and largest single party.
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