Miscellaneous
Introduction Should America be socialist? Is America already socialist? To answer either of those questions, we must first define socialism. What is it? What countries are socialist? For example, is Denmark socialist? If so, is it the same socialism as Venezuela? And what about “socialist” countries like Germany under the Nazis, “National Socialist German Workers' Party” and the former USSR, “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”? With the definitions in hand, we can have a useful discussion. That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode. Continuing Let’s look at the promised definitions: Democratic Socialism: I believe that most people who use this term are not talking about the traditional definition of socialism where the government owns the means of production. What they mean is aggressive income and wealth redistribution vehicles like free healthcare, free college and free daycare--perhaps just for starters. They are not talking about the government owning and/or controlling entities like Ford and Facebook. Not yet, anyway. However, Senator Sanders, Representative Ocasio-Cortez and others are in favor of government ownership in many cases. Healthcare is an obvious example. Traditional Socialism. See above, democratic socialism, with the addition of the government owning entities like Ford, Facebook and most everything else of size. You can keep your ice cream store if you have one. See Venezuela, Cuba and others as examples. Communism: Traditional socialism with the addition of prohibiting any private property. Capitalism: A system wherein people, individuals or groups, including corporations, own the means of production and engage in voluntary exchanges of money for goods and services. Profit: Selling things, taking in income, for more than it costs to make them, drives everything; capitalism, democratic socialism, traditional socialism, communism, no matter what the system is. Here we are not talking about taxes or what you do with taxes; we are talking about how you make the money and wealth that is taxed in the first place. You have to create wealth before you can redistribute it. That is done through generating profits. The gozindas have to exceed the gozoutas or nothing works in any system. I also promised thoughts about specific countries: Denmark. Bernie Sanders often uses Denmark as an example of democratic socialism. Denmark disagrees; their model is capitalism with heavy income redistribution. After seeing his country held up as an example in the 2016 US Democratic presidential debate, Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen used an address at Harvard to explain the Nordic model to a US audience suddenly very interested in Denmark. "I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.” Rasmussen said. Cuba. Socialist/Communist dictatorship. Complete mess. The Castros have used their dictatorial powers in a way that many people are still driving the cars that were on the island after the 1959 revolution. Venezuela. See above, but far worse. And who knew that was even possible? WWII Germany. The Nazis, despite the name National Socialist German Workers' Party were not socialists; they were an evil cult, preaching the superiority of certain genetic types, which gave them the right--the obligation--to eliminate other types and groups of humans. USSR. The former Soviet Union. Communist by self-identification. Here are a couple vignettes that sum up the economic disaster that communism was in the USSR. When a worker was interviewed about this job, his summary was, “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us”. Here is another one; a shopper had stood in line for over an hour in the local government grocery store before he finally made it to the counter to make his purchase for that night’...