It is about time that the American people were educated and informed about what true Socialism is and is not. The fact is that in true socialism, “the means of production” are owned by all of the people. In other words, all of the workplaces and businesses are owned, controlled and run by all of the people for the good and well-being of all of the people. They are not privately-owned by individuals and groups. In true socialism, we would not be totally equal in terms of how much we would get paid for our work, but we would be much, much more equal than we are now. There would not be any billionaires or people who have hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of millions of dollars in total wealth, most of which they inherited and did not earn by their own labor. We would share what we have.
Those individuals such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who call themselves Democratic Socialists are not socialists at all. They are actually ultra-liberal/progressive Democrats who believe that our federal government should do more and spend more on the safety-net programs as well as other social programs that help the poor, the near-poor (those living on 100%-125% of the official poverty line), the lower-middle-class, the middle-class and even the upper-middle-class because they also have financial struggles and problems especially when it comes to medical and health care expenses in their families. They don’t advocate replacing our capitalist economic system with a truly socialist economic system. They support our capitalist economic system, but they want a capitalist economic system which is more humane than it is now and which has more federal government spending to help all of the people just as our traditional allies do more of than we do here in the USA.
So, republicans and democrats, please stop spreading the false belief that having a social program such as Social Security somehow makes us a socialist country.
Because it does not.
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6 Comments
Income redistribution is socialism and that includes social security – read a little Ayn Rand and become woke.
AOC and Bernie are socialists who praise socialist and communist countries (Bernie and wife honeymooned in USSR because he loved them so much). As someone writing authoritatively on the matter you should know better…so that makes you either a trickster (trying to fool people) or a fool yourself.
Who is John Galt?
If you advocate Medicare for all replacing private insurance, you have essentially taken over the hospital & entire medical industry as none of them can survive without the private insurance system funded principally by private businesses.
They also essentially advocate taking over the energy industry with their Green New Deal. Their plan will lead to scarcity of energy & rationing of energy to businesses & residents.
It is an insidious trip to total socialism on an industry by industry basis & typical rationing & taxing that has plagued all socialist countries.
Yeah, it’s a pretty desperate place, Europe. Black markets in Allegra, people having to wait 15 months to give birth, it’s terrible.
I always wonder whether writers like LUENGINEER actually know anyone who lives there, or have spent much time there as a civilian themselves. Because if all you do is ingest Fox, you get a picture that no European would recognize as home. I’m also guessing that if someone took away their health insurance, which, pre-ACA, was a much nearer possibility, they’d be screaming bloody murder about the inhumanity and what they’d earned and deserved. Other people, though? Oh, to hell with other people. Only LUENGINEER & pals know how to work. It’s giving them real fits as they leave the workforce and find that the place does not actually collapse (maybe because younger people have been doing substantial parts of their jobs for them for a long time now).
I asked a Canadian friend one time what he missed most about home — this was pre-ACA — and he said, “Health insurance.”
I cant imagine a doctor turning down a roll of Bill’s stuck under his nose. Vwalla, capitalism.
I was curious about the submitter of this letter. So I Googled his name. It would appear that he is a gadfly who gets his jollies by submitting “letters to the editor” to numerous papers.
The same exact text of his letter above can be found elsewhere.
I note further that he Google came up with numerous other rants. Surprisingly, he signed some of them with completed contact information and other credentials.
Supposedly he is a retired professor, as one of his missives says:
Stewart B. Epstein
P.S. I am a retired college professor of Sociology and Social Work.
I taught at West Virginia University, Slippery Rock University, SUNY-Brockport, and Monroe Community College.
Why am I not surprised. Yet one more useless liberal academic.
The recognition of Socialist countries is selective. “Judeo- Christain” UK & the secular apartide National Socialist Israel are both socialist, Israel having nationalized many million$ of assets. But you wont hear em use these two as examples of Socialism because their next suggestion is Socialist countries are atheist. All a bunch of bs.