Barack Obama and Socialism

[Alex_P]

So why does Joseph in New York state, have to pay for the Health care of some high school drop out in Alabama (the state I live in.) There's almost no relationship to him and in most cases you really never depend on him.

Because they profit from mutual trade.

Because they share a common culture.

Because it's quite possible that the high-school drop-out is Joe's cousin or brother-in-law or childhood friend.

Because one day, either one of those guys might go to war on the other guy's behalf.

-- Alex

 

[fulano]

with this bailout we got the worst of BOTH worlds, we are socialist enough to use public money to take over businesses, but free market enough that the small guy gets robbed to pay for it. ohh and you needent bother posting in depth THEORYS about economics for me, they will make sence, hell the trickle down econimic theory makes sence, they ALL make sence untill they are put into action then wam the wheels fall off. one thing i know for sure is this, 8 years of free market deregulation economys have lead to the biggest economic mess in America since the depression and the way its going maybe ever. unregulated free markets OBVIOUSLY dont work any better than communism ever did, someplace in the middle is the best bet.

A-men brother. Just amen.

 

[ygetoff]

pretty much everything else hadn't worked up to this point so i'm wondering why retreading is much better.
and Fact Check: Joe the Plumber has no plumbing license. he lied on national television. so why is he a role model?

 

[anti_strunt]

Perhaps it's already been mentioned, but I think it's pretty wierd for the OP to have mentioned the USSR as an example of "spreading the wealth"... Even if one ignores the fact that the Soviet Union was extremely poor at creating wealth in the first place, what wealth there was was extremely unequally distributed, and the system was utterly corrupt. The wealth was concentraded in the hands of a small, political party elite, not "redistributed"...

So, just stating the obvious ("the Soviet Union was a failure")? No, but that the USSR cannot be used as an example of what the results of a real redistribution of wealth might have entailed.

So basically the old "Communism is not true socialism!" - though I do not believe socialism to be the ideal system either... Too inefficient at wealth creation, like I mentioned. There is probably some ideal middle ground somewhere.

 

[Smudgebob]

well Socialism and Communism are different my friends. They may both be Left Wing policies but why is that a bad thing? Surely a system in which the mega-rich, regardless of amount/lack of effort, give back to the community. Socialism isn't reducing everyone to the same level. There is still the drive to work and ambition to earn more money etc but there is also a better standard of living for the poorer membrers of society. Americans hate Communism so much because that is what the higher-ups tell them to think. And the higher-ups fear it as the will lose moeny and power. They've also twigged that Socialism means they will have to part with some luchre and they cant abide that so they collude Socialism with Communism and those performing seals who listen to the ,like of Bill o'Reilly just lap it up

 

[john-spartan117]

would someone tell me when spreading the fucking wealth to the majority of america was a bad thing?

 

[fulano]

In the end in every political system an elite that has a monopoly on resources comes out and wants to control everything be it he attempted communism regimes or the current capitalist ones. The trick is in preventing said elite from rising in the first place and, if it's already there, weakening it.

Getting the rich folk to pay higher taxes seems like the proper way to go for me.

 

[Selraik]

with this bailout we got the worst of BOTH worlds, we are socialist enough to use public money to take over businesses, but free market enough that the small guy gets robbed to pay for it. ohh and you needent bother posting in depth THEORYS about economics for me, they will make sence, hell the trickle down econimic theory makes sence, they ALL make sence untill they are put into action then wam the wheels fall off. one thing i know for sure is this, 8 years of free market deregulation economys have lead to the biggest economic mess in America since the depression and the way its going maybe ever. unregulated free markets OBVIOUSLY dont work any better than communism ever did, someplace in the middle is the best bet.

A-men brother. Just amen.

The way I've read this went down, the collapse of the mortgage industry didn't occur in a deregualted market, but in one where the feel-good tendencies of our government trumped free market realities. In an effort to provide homes to those who couldn't afford them, the government started to back many private companies with assurances they'd buy up the bad loans. Freddie Mac and Fannie May, for instance, were not private companies any more, but quasi-private, a private / public hybrid. Now that Uncle Sam was going to foot the bills for bad loan decisions, many bad loans were made to people who couldn't afford the house they were going to move in to. When reality finally hit the fan, the mortgage industry collapsed, and once again its government to the rescue, with more taxpayer money to cover up its own mistakes, and a plea for increased taxes in the future.

 

[Mistah Kurtz]

Addiction is not a god damned disease - it's a choice. You choose to start using drugs, and you choose to continue using them. That's why some addicts kick the stuff - they choose to. It's called WILLPOWER, not that I'd expect a communist to understand that. The reason I never got addicted to hard drugs is because I didn't use them - I stuck to beer, pot, and pharmacy drugs such as DXM and Vicodin. After using vicodin a few times, particularly, I decided to stop before I got hooked because i found myself wanting to do it again and again - my friends were not so smart. They only wanted to get high, and didn't care about the consequences. They've dug their own grave and now they have to live in it. I offered advice and warnings to these people, and some of them are now crackheads and heroin addicts jumping states to avoid arrests. I have no sympathy for them - you make your own choices in life, and it's not up to the government to help you when you fuck up. The way a society advances is by having the FREEDOM TO FAIL - something that communism attempts to eliminate completely. Sorry, but that's just not fair for the people who work hard.

And to the person asking "How much money does someone need" - the answer is: As much as they want. If you're happy making 30k a year, then more power to you. You've achieved happiness. Some people want more lucrative jobs, so they work harder. They work their way through school, they scrimp and save, they work hundred hour weeks. How dare you attempt to take away the fruits of their labor in vein of your fucked up concept of 'fairness' and 'equality'? People are not equal despite what the Marxists authors may have told you.

The choice to start drugs is a choice continuing them is a whole ?nother matter entirely. Maybe you should bother looking up research into addiction instead of *angry right-wing comment # 1* followed by *blame those in trouble #5* and then end with *self-righteous justification and personal anecdote combo # 3*.

Now being the Marxist ? Liberal ? Commie- Pinko I?m a hard reductionist. I have the desire to make people?s lives better coupled with the reality that people are always going to do harmful things. In other words I?m all for setting up wet homeless shelters, passing out condoms to students and at bars and clubs, setting up methadone clinics, safe-driver programs, Dutch styled coffee shops for pot smoking, and even places where Heroin addicted can come in and get a fresh needle to shoot up with in a safe ? controlled environment. But that?s ok, continue living in your selfish fairy-tale land where you actually believe that removing the safety net entirely means you get what?s yours. And please continue grasping for straw in your claims that we Marxists are somehow anti-work. McCarythyism is so much better than free speech after-all.

It's got nothing to do with self righteousness - it's got to do with accepting the reality of personal responsibility. I'm not anti-drug - I understand people use drugs, and I use them myself - I smoke pot every day when I have it and I used to drink constantly until I quit. I know you want to help these people, but validating their behavior is not the answer. If someone would have thrown me another bottle of booze when I was puking my guts out and sweating and shaking on the floor after drinking an entire fifth the night before I never would have quit. You don't you don't give alcoholics another drink and you don't give lazy and unambitious people free money, and you don't start giving people free health care when we don't have the money for it. It makes no sense. I'm pretty shocked at how many people took offense at me calling Obama a socialist, and even more shocked at how many people agreed with it and said that socialism was a good idea. I disagree with many of the things you said, particularly methadone clinics - methadone doesn't really do much to help heroin addicts kick it, and most of them combine it with another drug (I forget what it's called, benzine or something?) to create a heroin like effect from heroin. Dutch-style marijuana friendly shops is something I'm confused about...how would that help anybody? Marijuana should be legal anyway, and those places will spring up anyway once the people in charge (admittedly, the republicans are more to blame for this) pull their heads out of their asses and decriminalize it.
Marxists aren't anti-work from inception, but it's an inevitability of the philosophy. By giving everyone equal pay, you take away the incentive to work hard. If wealth gets redistributed equally to mend social injustice, then soon everybody gets dragged down into poverty. Again, listen to people who lived under socialism - "I pretend to work and they pretend to pay me". This is not a viable economic philosophy, and if you think it is you're most likely a hippie or a college student.

And by the way, I'm not a McCarthyist trying to 'censor new ideas'. That's just the battle cry of the radical liberal. I am not 'censoring new ideas', I'm 'mocking old retarded ideas that have been proven over and over to not work'. Communism is a beautiful house with a shitty foundation, and the slightest tremor will send the whole damn thing to the ground, and the people who were dumb enough to fall for it are left picking up the pieces.

 

[Mistah Kurtz]

I agree with socialism, but Obama is not a socialist. Obama is only increasing taxes on the upper class, and only 3% more, to where Clinton made the 250K+ pay. That's hardly socialism, and by spreading the wealth around, he means using taxes on things that are important, which means roads, bridges, schools, and health care. McCain wants to freeze spending, lower taxes, and start 2 more wars. How can that lower taxes? Besides, our police, schools, postal service, and firefighters are socialized. How would you like it if a fireman pulled you out of a burning building, and gave you a bill for 10,000 dollars? That is essentially what heath care is doing, so that should be socialized like everything else.

McCain wants to start two more wars? And Obama is some peace loving dove? Did you even WATCH the debates?

 

[Imitation Saccharin]

By giving everyone equal pay, you take away the incentive to work hard.

Fuck you Einstien. Pfff. God damn lazy bastard. I mean what has Einstein ever given us? Exactly, nothing! Because he had no monetary incentive!

 

[jthm]

What's wrong with free healthcare? Should someone do without having their hand put back on just because they can't pay a bill?

Health care is not a right. Just because it's important to staying alive doesn't mean it's a right. Food isn't a right, is it? Hobos are starving in the street, why shouldn't they get food just because they can't pay a grocery bill? People need cars to get to work - should the government buy poor people cars too? Should someone be deprived of transportation just because they can't pay a bill?

So far what I'm seeing is a shameless support for socialism. I'm actually pretty surprised.
Socialism is wrong because it takes away the incentive to work and takes away the power of the individual. When left wingers tell you that you're poor and destined to stay that way, STOP BELEIVING THEM! In America you work for what you get and you don't resent those who reap the rewards for their efforts. In the words of Glenn Beck, 'why should someone who worked hard their whole life have to cut a check for the guy who fucked up their order at McDonalds?"

Because the way the system is set up now, the rich continue to get richer by fleecing money off of people who would be rich by the efforts of their labor in a fair market environment LIKE WE'RE SUPPOSED TO HAVE BUT DON'T!

Rich corporations outsource employment to other countries because they are unwilling to finance someone else getting rich in the same system that their CEO's and Shareholders did.
Taxing the upper 5% of America more heavily might not seem fair, but we need the money in order to better society as a whole and you can't take it from people who don't have it.

Health Care Should be amended in this country to be a constitutionally garuanteed right. Government exists to protect and assist it's people. If it can't help out when people are injured or dying, what the hell good is it? Might as well tear it down and start again. By the way, Hillary supported socialized medicine. Obama doesn't.

Bill Ayers was a terrorist during the 1960s. Obama was a child in the 1960s. If you can show me some photos of him taking part personally in a strike against America alongside Bill Ayers then you have a case. Otherwise it's a nonissue.

JOE THE PLUMBER IS NOT A FUCKING PLUMBER! He is an entrepenuer and investor who bought a plumbing company. I promise you that when your toilet fills up with shit, Joe has never and will never show up with some drano and a snake to flush it out. He might know enough to fix his own plumbing and power to him, but no plumber makes over $250k a year.

During their presidencies both FDR and Eisenhower instituted major reforms that could be called socialist as easily as anything Obama is suggesting. And so what if we make a few more programs socialist in nature. It's not as if he'll be elected and we'll all take down the American flag and start flying the hammer and cycle. If a solution works then we need to take advantage of it and not willfully ignore our problem because it's the same idea that a country we've never been on good terms with liked the idea once upon a time too.

 

[Mistah Kurtz]

Sure, Exxon makes huge profits, but they also pay huge amounts of taxes - that one company paid more money in taxes than the bottom 50% of the entire country paid put together.

Source, please? It's not that I think you're lying. It's that I want to see the exact language in your reference.

-- Alex

I originally heard the figure from Glenn Beck, but rather than cite a source and risk people attacking the source itself, here's a google search link that gives this figure from many different sources: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=IQS&q=exxon+mobile+taxes+more+50%25&btnG=Search

 

[Smudgebob]

Well as a non-American I'd rather see someone with a decent foreign policy. In a British election Obama would seem quite a generic candidate; his only real selling point would be his ethnicity just as Thatcher's was her gender. However compared to McCain, Obama is remarkable. If a British version of McCain ever tried to run for election he'd have been returned straught to his nursing home and the Brit version of Palin would have been sectioned long ago

 

[fulano]

And by the way, I'm not a McCarthyist trying to 'censor new ideas'. That's just the battle cry of the radical liberal. I am not 'censoring new ideas', I'm 'mocking old retarded ideas that have been proven over and over to not work'. Communism is a beautiful house with a shitty foundation, and the slightest tremor will send the whole damn thing to the ground, and the people who were dumb enough to fall for it are left picking up the pieces.

If communism failed, then, right now capitalism is failing just the same. Everywhere around the western globe you see measures being taken to rescue the economy, and coincidentally, all those involve the government stepping in and burning the taxpayers' money because some people in the banks just didn't know how to perform their duties properly or so I want to believe (the alternative is that they fucked up on purpose).

One word of advice: if you are going to attack a certain political view, at least argument instead of just declaring stuff in sentences.

"I'm in a boat full of white snow!" See? I just declared something without actually saying anything.

McCain wants to start two more wars? And Obama is some peace loving dove? Did you even WATCH the debates?

I did watch the debates, and Obama is no peace loving dove, BUT he's trying to pull out of Iraq and focus on the inside and right now that's better option for the U.S and its broken economy.

 

[black lincon]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-obama-chicago-socialist,0,4048540.story

there from several horses mouths. obama is NOT a socialist.

/thread

 

[TomNook]

"Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses!" Not the whole quote but people sometimes forget at least that much. This country was founded on the ideal that a people shouldn't be ruled by a richer class. One that continually robbed them of their money and did nothing for them. People were fed up with that and revolted.
We are now a society where the wealthy complain that we are taking their money but really how much do they need? Do you really want to complain that you can't afford your new HDTV because someone needs to live? Doesn't that seem even a little unkind? What if you needed this assistance? What if, God forbid, you became down on your luck and were stuck with no home and no food? Would you actually look at one of the wealthy and just say "well, they need it more than me."?
People sometimes forget that the homeless are still human beings. Forget class, forget sides, just remember that these were people with pasts, just like everyone else. They are not a statistic but rather a soul

Talented driven people don't need the government's help to succeed. For example, my grandpa was a German immigrant at the height of World War 2 propaganda. The only language he spoke was german. You know where he is now, lounging in an apartment in the Ritz-Carlton over looking Ellis Island. He is one of the most talented Cardiologists country. He treated Rudy Guiliani and his ilk. He was four, had no money, and didn't speak a word of English. If he didn't need any help, then neither do any of you.

So everyone must be of the same ilk as your grandfather? They must contain the same past or upbringing and therefore are bound to be successful? Not everyone can be rich and successful because then there would be no rich just evenness

What I'm trying to say is that anyone can become rich,without the government's help, through determination and intelligence. I have no idea what the hell you're trying to say.