Why do people think Socialism is Evil

[VZLANemesis]

errrmm.... I live in a so called socialist country and it's all going to hell.
Although we really don't have any real sort of socialism, as usual politicians just got greedy and there was simply a redistribution of power, those who were now rich are now getting poorer by the day and "vice-versa" (poor people are still pretty poor but a lot of the people rooting for the president are getting rich by being corrupt)

What country is this, if you don't mind my asking?

Venezuela. That's where I live. Recently the only guy who's had a shot of getting to be president instead of the "dictator" who rules now has had an order of arrest in his name and was forced out of the country, just in case you need an indicator of how bad things are around here.

 

[Thanatos34]

I believe i chimed into this conversation a little late, and I could be wrong, its been a while, but I was under the impression that under Socialism, everyone gets paid the same regardless of job description. Doctors get paid the same as Landscapers. In this scenario, people can make the same amount of money mowing lawns than any other profession, people will not strive to do their best in the work force, and everything, including services and products, will be mediocre at best because they do not need to strive to do better. They are already getting paid no matter how much effort they put in. Can someone please correct me if i'm wrong? This is very interesting.

It is neither Socialist nor Marxist no one that I know of has ever called for an flat pay grade except for capitalist who make up lies about the other two systems. In fact Engels goes into a very good review of how a Communist pay system would work in Wage Labour and Capital.

The Socialist might claim that it doesn't lead to this, but it is the end philosophy of spreading the wealth around. A capitalist system would never lead to this, it is against everything a capitalist stands for.

Why would it lead to a flat pay scale? That is just scaremongering unless you are honestly saying the garbage collector is more important to the collective whole then a highly skilled brain surgeon. Read Wage Labour and Capital it discusses this much more thoroughly you have to have pay differences obviously because not every job is equally important to the collective but they are all important. As long as someone works they are able to reap the benefits of the whole which means they can't be a leach.

It is the end philosophy of Socialism in the same way that mob rule is the end product of democracy. I'm not saying that it is Socialism, at that point, I think you can just call it Screw-all-of-you-ism, but one of Socialism's main tenants is the philosophy of spreading the wealth around.

 

[Thanatos34]

errrmm.... I live in a so called socialist country and it's all going to hell.
Although we really don't have any real sort of socialism, as usual politicians just got greedy and there was simply a redistribution of power, those who were now rich are now getting poorer by the day and "vice-versa" (poor people are still pretty poor but a lot of the people rooting for the president are getting rich by being corrupt)

What country is this, if you don't mind my asking?

Venezuela. That's where I live. Recently the only guy who's had a shot of getting to be president instead of the "dictator" who rules now has had an order of arrest in his name and was forced out of the country, just in case you need an indicator of how bad things are around here.

Ah yes. I sympathize with you. But Chavez' country is not the best ideal to hold up as a ideally Socialist country. Look at Sweden, for example.

 

[Rajin Cajun]

Yeah socialisms absolutley horrible sucks having an nhs and seeing a doctor withing 15 minutes of calling every time or free prescriptions when a student/unemployed or free operations or free dental care if unemployed/a student how the hell have we not started eating each other yet?!?

RUN AMERICA RUN FROM THIS NIGHTMARE! /sarcasm

This made me laugh pretty hard mostly because it is sooooo stereotypical of my fellow Americans. Hell I guess you can't expect much when you have talking heads like Glenn Beck who tell everyone that healthcare is a privilege and not a right. I guess Glenn Beck should tell that to people who have had children die in childbirth since we have the highest infant mortality rate in the First World. I guess having your babies die is a privilege. Hur Hur. And for those who couldn't tell I'm being sarcastic about the last bit.

To be honest the lack of adopting certain Socialist programs is the biggest reason I am looking at leaving this country. I couldn't look myself in the mirror if one of my children died because of our shoddy medical system. I am more then willing to give up my Second Amendment Rights which I hold dear if it means I can raise children with a good education and proper medical care.

Our shoddy medical system that just gave a woman who couldn't eat, drink, or breathe without a tube in her throat a face transplant (One of the first, and the most extensive) so she can do all those things normally again? She may disagree with you.

Haha ignorance is bliss. The first face transplant was done in India with France right behind it. So you were saying?

That's why I said ONE of the first, but the most extensive. But I guess any old shoddy medical system can do that now, it's just those first timers that are up to par. And where are you expecting to find better? There's already multiple people from universal health care countries talking about 3-5 hour waits in this thread.

You should visit an inner-city American Hospital where they turn away people at ERs. 5 hour waits would be heaven. Maybe you should get out of your Ivory Tower a little and see the real America.

EMTALA legally prevents hospitals from turning people away at ERs. Interestingly, it doesn't allocae funding towards paying for emergency treatment. A lot of hospitals are actually being forced to close due to a combination of EMTALA costs and legal fees. I don't want to bombard this thread with quotes from experts, but I can back this claim up if you want me to.

Which only pertains to hospitals that are not privately owned hence why a lot of hospitals are going this route. Atlanta, Georgia is the priemer example of shafting the Inner-City by making the only available hospitals private and therefor able to turn people away. Which is one of the biggest reasons Atlanta has been in a major decline. That the government allows this loophole is disgusting but that is America.

I'm roughly 99% sure that EMTALA also applies to private hospitals, at least to some capacity. I'll have to double check that one though, and you might just be right.

It might. I have always been under the impression that Private Hospitals were able to avoid this through some loophole I would hope it is not true but with all the other loopholes in American Healthcare it wouldn't surprise me.

I checked the text of EMTALA. It's pretty convoluted, but they basically say that any hospital that receives government money from Medicare is "participating" in EMTALA. This basically includes all public and private hospitals.

Which basically means don't take government and you can shaft anyone you want. Which I believe is the case in Atlanta where hospitals stopped taking medicare so they could turn away poor blacks.

Now who's the conspiracy theorist?

Again, what exactly are you proposing? That private hospitals be forced to treat all patients for all conditions?

I don't think anyone is going to turn away someone who is dying, but what right do you have to tell a privately owned business, (yes a hospital is a business), to take a cut in their income in order to treat a stuffy nose?

The whole point is it should never have become a business only in America could be so convoluted and it will be our downfall. While the greedy and rich trample the poor masses and claim they gained their profit from the sweat of their own brow when in reality it came form the broken backs of the masses they trampled. Privatizing Hospitals is madness and anyone who agrees with such a bizarre Healthcare system is equally insane and sociopathic.

 

[ZZ-Tops89]

I believe i chimed into this conversation a little late, and I could be wrong, its been a while, but I was under the impression that under Socialism, everyone gets paid the same regardless of job description. Doctors get paid the same as Landscapers. In this scenario, people can make the same amount of money mowing lawns than any other profession, people will not strive to do their best in the work force, and everything, including services and products, will be mediocre at best because they do not need to strive to do better. They are already getting paid no matter how much effort they put in. Can someone please correct me if i'm wrong? This is very interesting.

It is neither Socialist nor Marxist no one that I know of has ever called for an flat pay grade except for capitalist who make up lies about the other two systems. In fact Engels goes into a very good review of how a Communist pay system would work in Wage Labour and Capital.

The Socialist might claim that it doesn't lead to this, but it is the end philosophy of spreading the wealth around. A capitalist system would never lead to this, it is against everything a capitalist stands for.

Ultimately SOCIALISM would allow for differences in income and use taxation to reditribute. COMMUNISM, depending on the author, would either abandon currency and adopt a sort of neo-barter system with need determining allocation of goods and services (more of a contemporary approach), or, adopting a more Marxian view in which the laborer is given the value of the surplus they create via their labor. A lot of people ignore the fact that Marx wasn't purely a revolutionary, he was also at least in part an economist. His basic opinion was that through their labor, the individual laborers (proletariat) create surplus goods, but it's the people who own the means of production who gain profits from those surpluses. That arrangement, as Marx sees it, is unjust as the laborer is not being compensated fully for his labor. There's a lot more to it than what I just said, but that's just a brief outline of the basic economic premise for the line of reasoning.

 

[n64link]

Me personally, Because I bust my ass every day for just enough money to pay my bills and eat. **** giveing to the "needy" I've lived around "needy" people all of my life, They don't work, don't want to work, wait for that govrnmet check, spend it on booze or drugs, oh wait. does begging cout as work? Now there are some exceptions, very few, that I've seen. But most are lazy and become complaciant in their poverty.

To those who support socilism, If you had 2 houses and I was homeless would you give me one?

Since I'm a capitalist, I guess that question doesn't apply to me. But I'll answer anyways.

I'd give you a third of a house. On the condition that you get a job in six months, and pay a little fee, (About a fifth of the house's value.) and stay away from my anti commy barracks.

Aww, but I want to man the harpoons.

Thank you though, at least sombody answered. I was hoping of somebody to say yes So I could contunie my exaple the main flaw with socilaist. Should I continue on my own, evrey body will say "I'd never say that."

 

[Thanatos34]

I believe i chimed into this conversation a little late, and I could be wrong, its been a while, but I was under the impression that under Socialism, everyone gets paid the same regardless of job description. Doctors get paid the same as Landscapers. In this scenario, people can make the same amount of money mowing lawns than any other profession, people will not strive to do their best in the work force, and everything, including services and products, will be mediocre at best because they do not need to strive to do better. They are already getting paid no matter how much effort they put in. Can someone please correct me if i'm wrong? This is very interesting.

It is neither Socialist nor Marxist no one that I know of has ever called for an flat pay grade except for capitalist who make up lies about the other two systems. In fact Engels goes into a very good review of how a Communist pay system would work in Wage Labour and Capital.

The Socialist might claim that it doesn't lead to this, but it is the end philosophy of spreading the wealth around. A capitalist system would never lead to this, it is against everything a capitalist stands for.

Ultimately SOCIALISM would allow for differences in income and use taxation to reditribute. COMMUNISM, depending on the author, would either abandon currency and adopt a sort of neo-barter system with need determining allocation of goods and services (more of a contemporary approach), or, adopting a more Marxian view in which the laborer is given the value of the surplus they create via their labor. A lot of people ignore the fact that Marx wasn't purely a revolutionary, he was also at least in part an economist. His basic opinion was that through their labor, the individual laborers (proletariat) create surplus goods, but it's the people who own the means of production who gain profits from those surpluses. That arrangement, as Marx sees it, is unjust as the laborer is not being compensated fully for his labor. There's a lot more to it than what I just said, but that's just a brief outline of the basic economic premise for the line of reasoning.

Perhaps I confused the two systems then. My apologies, its 3 in the morning.

 

[ZZ-Tops89]

Yeah socialisms absolutley horrible sucks having an nhs and seeing a doctor withing 15 minutes of calling every time or free prescriptions when a student/unemployed or free operations or free dental care if unemployed/a student how the hell have we not started eating each other yet?!?

RUN AMERICA RUN FROM THIS NIGHTMARE! /sarcasm

This made me laugh pretty hard mostly because it is sooooo stereotypical of my fellow Americans. Hell I guess you can't expect much when you have talking heads like Glenn Beck who tell everyone that healthcare is a privilege and not a right. I guess Glenn Beck should tell that to people who have had children die in childbirth since we have the highest infant mortality rate in the First World. I guess having your babies die is a privilege. Hur Hur. And for those who couldn't tell I'm being sarcastic about the last bit.

To be honest the lack of adopting certain Socialist programs is the biggest reason I am looking at leaving this country. I couldn't look myself in the mirror if one of my children died because of our shoddy medical system. I am more then willing to give up my Second Amendment Rights which I hold dear if it means I can raise children with a good education and proper medical care.

Our shoddy medical system that just gave a woman who couldn't eat, drink, or breathe without a tube in her throat a face transplant (One of the first, and the most extensive) so she can do all those things normally again? She may disagree with you.

Haha ignorance is bliss. The first face transplant was done in India with France right behind it. So you were saying?

That's why I said ONE of the first, but the most extensive. But I guess any old shoddy medical system can do that now, it's just those first timers that are up to par. And where are you expecting to find better? There's already multiple people from universal health care countries talking about 3-5 hour waits in this thread.

You should visit an inner-city American Hospital where they turn away people at ERs. 5 hour waits would be heaven. Maybe you should get out of your Ivory Tower a little and see the real America.

EMTALA legally prevents hospitals from turning people away at ERs. Interestingly, it doesn't allocae funding towards paying for emergency treatment. A lot of hospitals are actually being forced to close due to a combination of EMTALA costs and legal fees. I don't want to bombard this thread with quotes from experts, but I can back this claim up if you want me to.

Which only pertains to hospitals that are not privately owned hence why a lot of hospitals are going this route. Atlanta, Georgia is the priemer example of shafting the Inner-City by making the only available hospitals private and therefor able to turn people away. Which is one of the biggest reasons Atlanta has been in a major decline. That the government allows this loophole is disgusting but that is America.

I'm roughly 99% sure that EMTALA also applies to private hospitals, at least to some capacity. I'll have to double check that one though, and you might just be right.

It might. I have always been under the impression that Private Hospitals were able to avoid this through some loophole I would hope it is not true but with all the other loopholes in American Healthcare it wouldn't surprise me.

I checked the text of EMTALA. It's pretty convoluted, but they basically say that any hospital that receives government money from Medicare is "participating" in EMTALA. This basically includes all public and private hospitals.

Which basically means don't take government and you can shaft anyone you want. Which I believe is the case in Atlanta where hospitals stopped taking medicare so they could turn away poor blacks.

Now who's the conspiracy theorist?

Again, what exactly are you proposing? That private hospitals be forced to treat all patients for all conditions?

I don't think anyone is going to turn away someone who is dying, but what right do you have to tell a privately owned business, (yes a hospital is a business), to take a cut in their income in order to treat a stuffy nose?

The whole point is it should never have become a business only in America could be so convoluted and it will be our downfall. While the greedy and rich trample the poor masses and claim they gained their profit from the sweat of their own brow when in reality it came form the broken backs of the masses they trampled. Privatizing Hospitals is madness and anyone who agrees with such a bizarre Healthcare system is equally insane and sociopathic.

Privatized health care has its problems, but it's not that bad. It does lead to more R & D than state run hospitals, since private hospitals are more concerned with efficiency and effectiveness, especially in terms of competing with other hospitals. The failure here is a combination of poorly designed regulation, more poorly designed regulation to try and fix problems with earlier poorly designed regulation, and, yes, less than reputable private owners.

 

[paasi]

Reason to the fear of socialism is its similiarity to communism and communism has been generally feared and hated in the US since the cold war when a force equal in power to the US (soviet Russia) threatened the world i.e their coffers. Infamous communist hunts (refer to witch hunts in dark ages) were frequent during that time. Because the fall of Soviet Russia happened only around 20 years ago it is only natural that the antipahy towards their political ideals remains.

The association of sosialism to communism is wrong though. It is known through out the world though that republicans are stubborn as mules and not only misinformed but unwilling to accept information that contradicts their own beliefs, hence they are favored by fundies, and when a group is favored so eventually many of its members may become such. Fundies are known to hate things just because, hence republican party ought to be liquidated and the ground salted and burned. Then the otherwise good nation may continue its formerly stunted growth.

This is only a theory based on observation and deduction.

 

[Thanatos34]

Yeah socialisms absolutley horrible sucks having an nhs and seeing a doctor withing 15 minutes of calling every time or free prescriptions when a student/unemployed or free operations or free dental care if unemployed/a student how the hell have we not started eating each other yet?!?

RUN AMERICA RUN FROM THIS NIGHTMARE! /sarcasm

This made me laugh pretty hard mostly because it is sooooo stereotypical of my fellow Americans. Hell I guess you can't expect much when you have talking heads like Glenn Beck who tell everyone that healthcare is a privilege and not a right. I guess Glenn Beck should tell that to people who have had children die in childbirth since we have the highest infant mortality rate in the First World. I guess having your babies die is a privilege. Hur Hur. And for those who couldn't tell I'm being sarcastic about the last bit.

To be honest the lack of adopting certain Socialist programs is the biggest reason I am looking at leaving this country. I couldn't look myself in the mirror if one of my children died because of our shoddy medical system. I am more then willing to give up my Second Amendment Rights which I hold dear if it means I can raise children with a good education and proper medical care.

Our shoddy medical system that just gave a woman who couldn't eat, drink, or breathe without a tube in her throat a face transplant (One of the first, and the most extensive) so she can do all those things normally again? She may disagree with you.

Haha ignorance is bliss. The first face transplant was done in India with France right behind it. So you were saying?

That's why I said ONE of the first, but the most extensive. But I guess any old shoddy medical system can do that now, it's just those first timers that are up to par. And where are you expecting to find better? There's already multiple people from universal health care countries talking about 3-5 hour waits in this thread.

You should visit an inner-city American Hospital where they turn away people at ERs. 5 hour waits would be heaven. Maybe you should get out of your Ivory Tower a little and see the real America.

EMTALA legally prevents hospitals from turning people away at ERs. Interestingly, it doesn't allocae funding towards paying for emergency treatment. A lot of hospitals are actually being forced to close due to a combination of EMTALA costs and legal fees. I don't want to bombard this thread with quotes from experts, but I can back this claim up if you want me to.

Which only pertains to hospitals that are not privately owned hence why a lot of hospitals are going this route. Atlanta, Georgia is the priemer example of shafting the Inner-City by making the only available hospitals private and therefor able to turn people away. Which is one of the biggest reasons Atlanta has been in a major decline. That the government allows this loophole is disgusting but that is America.

I'm roughly 99% sure that EMTALA also applies to private hospitals, at least to some capacity. I'll have to double check that one though, and you might just be right.

It might. I have always been under the impression that Private Hospitals were able to avoid this through some loophole I would hope it is not true but with all the other loopholes in American Healthcare it wouldn't surprise me.

I checked the text of EMTALA. It's pretty convoluted, but they basically say that any hospital that receives government money from Medicare is "participating" in EMTALA. This basically includes all public and private hospitals.

Which basically means don't take government and you can shaft anyone you want. Which I believe is the case in Atlanta where hospitals stopped taking medicare so they could turn away poor blacks.

Now who's the conspiracy theorist?

Again, what exactly are you proposing? That private hospitals be forced to treat all patients for all conditions?

I don't think anyone is going to turn away someone who is dying, but what right do you have to tell a privately owned business, (yes a hospital is a business), to take a cut in their income in order to treat a stuffy nose?

The whole point is it should never have become a business only in America could be so convoluted and it will be our downfall. While the greedy and rich trample the poor masses and claim they gained their profit from the sweat of their own brow when in reality it came form the broken backs of the masses they trampled. Privatizing Hospitals is madness and anyone who agrees with such a bizarre Healthcare system is equally insane and sociopathic.

Then I guess we have to agree to disagree, because the alternative is to leave to our wonderfully inept and corrupt government to handle it, and I think that if you want that, you're insane.

They would probably pay for the tremendous cost of nationalized health care by printing more money. "Oh, we're out of money? That's okay, let's just make more. That will fix everything."

 

[ZZ-Tops89]

I believe i chimed into this conversation a little late, and I could be wrong, its been a while, but I was under the impression that under Socialism, everyone gets paid the same regardless of job description. Doctors get paid the same as Landscapers. In this scenario, people can make the same amount of money mowing lawns than any other profession, people will not strive to do their best in the work force, and everything, including services and products, will be mediocre at best because they do not need to strive to do better. They are already getting paid no matter how much effort they put in. Can someone please correct me if i'm wrong? This is very interesting.

It is neither Socialist nor Marxist no one that I know of has ever called for an flat pay grade except for capitalist who make up lies about the other two systems. In fact Engels goes into a very good review of how a Communist pay system would work in Wage Labour and Capital.

The Socialist might claim that it doesn't lead to this, but it is the end philosophy of spreading the wealth around. A capitalist system would never lead to this, it is against everything a capitalist stands for.

Ultimately SOCIALISM would allow for differences in income and use taxation to reditribute. COMMUNISM, depending on the author, would either abandon currency and adopt a sort of neo-barter system with need determining allocation of goods and services (more of a contemporary approach), or, adopting a more Marxian view in which the laborer is given the value of the surplus they create via their labor. A lot of people ignore the fact that Marx wasn't purely a revolutionary, he was also at least in part an economist. His basic opinion was that through their labor, the individual laborers (proletariat) create surplus goods, but it's the people who own the means of production who gain profits from those surpluses. That arrangement, as Marx sees it, is unjust as the laborer is not being compensated fully for his labor. There's a lot more to it than what I just said, but that's just a brief outline of the basic economic premise for the line of reasoning.

Perhaps I confused the two systems then. My apologies, its 3 in the morning.

That's still not stopping me. I'm on hour 21 without sleep and by any account I'm on an argumentative roll here.

 

[Thanatos34]

Reason to the fear of socialism is its similiarity to communism and communism has been generally feared and hated in the US since the cold war when a force equal in power to the US (soviet Russia) threatened the world i.e their coffers. Infamous communist hunts (refer to witch hunts in dark ages) were frequent during that time. Because the fall of Soviet Russia happened only around 20 years ago it is only natural that the antipahy towards their political ideals remains.

The association of sosialism to communism is wrong though. It is known through out the world though that republicans are stubborn as mules and not only misinformed but unwilling to accept information that contradicts their own beliefs, hence they are favored by fundies, and when a group is favored so eventually many of its members may become such. Fundies are known to hate things just because, hence republican party ought to be liquidated and the ground salted and burned. Then the otherwise good nation may continue its formerly stunted growth.

This is only a theory based on observation and deduction.

A wonderful generalization of an entire political spectrum based on your own observations. Bravo.

 

[Thanatos34]

I believe i chimed into this conversation a little late, and I could be wrong, its been a while, but I was under the impression that under Socialism, everyone gets paid the same regardless of job description. Doctors get paid the same as Landscapers. In this scenario, people can make the same amount of money mowing lawns than any other profession, people will not strive to do their best in the work force, and everything, including services and products, will be mediocre at best because they do not need to strive to do better. They are already getting paid no matter how much effort they put in. Can someone please correct me if i'm wrong? This is very interesting.

It is neither Socialist nor Marxist no one that I know of has ever called for an flat pay grade except for capitalist who make up lies about the other two systems. In fact Engels goes into a very good review of how a Communist pay system would work in Wage Labour and Capital.

The Socialist might claim that it doesn't lead to this, but it is the end philosophy of spreading the wealth around. A capitalist system would never lead to this, it is against everything a capitalist stands for.

Ultimately SOCIALISM would allow for differences in income and use taxation to reditribute. COMMUNISM, depending on the author, would either abandon currency and adopt a sort of neo-barter system with need determining allocation of goods and services (more of a contemporary approach), or, adopting a more Marxian view in which the laborer is given the value of the surplus they create via their labor. A lot of people ignore the fact that Marx wasn't purely a revolutionary, he was also at least in part an economist. His basic opinion was that through their labor, the individual laborers (proletariat) create surplus goods, but it's the people who own the means of production who gain profits from those surpluses. That arrangement, as Marx sees it, is unjust as the laborer is not being compensated fully for his labor. There's a lot more to it than what I just said, but that's just a brief outline of the basic economic premise for the line of reasoning.

Perhaps I confused the two systems then. My apologies, its 3 in the morning.

That's still not stopping me. I'm on hour 21 without sleep and by any account I'm on an argumentative roll here.

Dear God. I stayed up for 38 hours straight once, that was the most I could handle.

I actually fell asleep while sitting at the dinner table without realizing it.

 

[twistedshadows]

Don't forget, the baby boomers were brain washed by American propaganda against socialism, and they have passed their opinions and beliefs to their children.

That is such a general statement. The people I know were not "brainwashed" against socialism, and have not instilled a dislike of socialism in their children. This includes people in the Baby Boom Generation, Generation X, and Generation Y, by the way. In high school, I was taught both the benefits and down-sides of socialism (which, incidentally, is the same way in which democracy and capitalism were taught to us), not a general "socialism is evil" statement. No one I've ever met believes that.

The educational policy I've seen thus far regarding this controversy is the following: "There's capitalism, which is what he have here in America, and socialism and communism, which are basically the same, where the government owns everything instead of the people."

You have the "which is what we have here in America" which is an obvious implication that capitalism is the embodiment of everything good and righteous (because people are always trying to enforce a general "America is always good and right" idea in American people), and "the government owns everything instead of the people" which is incorrect, and forces the student to infer the rest on their own, leading to people thinking "well, she said the state owns everything, so the people own nothing, which means that no matter what you have, it can never actually be yours, which means the government has the power to take whatever it likes from you without your permission."

Every teacher I've ever had that was responsible for teaching a field even related to any sort of politics has said this. So even if someone comes along and says something different, people won't believe it. A flaw in American education: teach young kids things that please the kids instead of facts, then try to force them to forget all that when they get older so they can relearn what actually happened. It might sound like a good method to encourage people to question the things they are taught, but usually people are just too stubborn to accept that everything they've known up to now has been false.

I had a completely different experience in school. My teachers taught us to question everything (or maybe a better way of saying it would be that they taught us to never take information - even in text books - at face value), and never enforced the whole "America is good and righteous" slant. I guess that just goes to show how different education can be within one country.

 

[n64link]

Reason to the fear of socialism is its similiarity to communism and communism has been generally feared and hated in the US since the cold war when a force equal in power to the US (soviet Russia) threatened the world i.e their coffers. Infamous communist hunts (refer to witch hunts in dark ages) were frequent during that time. Because the fall of Soviet Russia happened only around 20 years ago it is only natural that the antipahy towards their political ideals remains.

The association of sosialism to communism is wrong though. It is known through out the world though that republicans are stubborn as mules and not only misinformed but unwilling to accept information that contradicts their own beliefs, hence they are favored by fundies, and when a group is favored so eventually many of its members may become such. Fundies are known to hate things just because, hence republican party ought to be liquidated and the ground salted and burned. Then the otherwise good nation may continue its formerly stunted growth.

This is only a theory based on observation and deduction.

OK, that's just cheap shoting the republicans. I've met far more registerd DEMs that won't listen to a word I say than REPs. FYI, Both parties have failed, which is why people are leaveing bother parties and voting as indpendants.

 

[Rajin Cajun]

Yeah socialisms absolutley horrible sucks having an nhs and seeing a doctor withing 15 minutes of calling every time or free prescriptions when a student/unemployed or free operations or free dental care if unemployed/a student how the hell have we not started eating each other yet?!?

RUN AMERICA RUN FROM THIS NIGHTMARE! /sarcasm

This made me laugh pretty hard mostly because it is sooooo stereotypical of my fellow Americans. Hell I guess you can't expect much when you have talking heads like Glenn Beck who tell everyone that healthcare is a privilege and not a right. I guess Glenn Beck should tell that to people who have had children die in childbirth since we have the highest infant mortality rate in the First World. I guess having your babies die is a privilege. Hur Hur. And for those who couldn't tell I'm being sarcastic about the last bit.

To be honest the lack of adopting certain Socialist programs is the biggest reason I am looking at leaving this country. I couldn't look myself in the mirror if one of my children died because of our shoddy medical system. I am more then willing to give up my Second Amendment Rights which I hold dear if it means I can raise children with a good education and proper medical care.

Our shoddy medical system that just gave a woman who couldn't eat, drink, or breathe without a tube in her throat a face transplant (One of the first, and the most extensive) so she can do all those things normally again? She may disagree with you.

Haha ignorance is bliss. The first face transplant was done in India with France right behind it. So you were saying?

That's why I said ONE of the first, but the most extensive. But I guess any old shoddy medical system can do that now, it's just those first timers that are up to par. And where are you expecting to find better? There's already multiple people from universal health care countries talking about 3-5 hour waits in this thread.

You should visit an inner-city American Hospital where they turn away people at ERs. 5 hour waits would be heaven. Maybe you should get out of your Ivory Tower a little and see the real America.

EMTALA legally prevents hospitals from turning people away at ERs. Interestingly, it doesn't allocae funding towards paying for emergency treatment. A lot of hospitals are actually being forced to close due to a combination of EMTALA costs and legal fees. I don't want to bombard this thread with quotes from experts, but I can back this claim up if you want me to.

Which only pertains to hospitals that are not privately owned hence why a lot of hospitals are going this route. Atlanta, Georgia is the priemer example of shafting the Inner-City by making the only available hospitals private and therefor able to turn people away. Which is one of the biggest reasons Atlanta has been in a major decline. That the government allows this loophole is disgusting but that is America.

I'm roughly 99% sure that EMTALA also applies to private hospitals, at least to some capacity. I'll have to double check that one though, and you might just be right.

It might. I have always been under the impression that Private Hospitals were able to avoid this through some loophole I would hope it is not true but with all the other loopholes in American Healthcare it wouldn't surprise me.

I checked the text of EMTALA. It's pretty convoluted, but they basically say that any hospital that receives government money from Medicare is "participating" in EMTALA. This basically includes all public and private hospitals.

Which basically means don't take government and you can shaft anyone you want. Which I believe is the case in Atlanta where hospitals stopped taking medicare so they could turn away poor blacks.

Now who's the conspiracy theorist?

Again, what exactly are you proposing? That private hospitals be forced to treat all patients for all conditions?

I don't think anyone is going to turn away someone who is dying, but what right do you have to tell a privately owned business, (yes a hospital is a business), to take a cut in their income in order to treat a stuffy nose?

The whole point is it should never have become a business only in America could be so convoluted and it will be our downfall. While the greedy and rich trample the poor masses and claim they gained their profit from the sweat of their own brow when in reality it came form the broken backs of the masses they trampled. Privatizing Hospitals is madness and anyone who agrees with such a bizarre Healthcare system is equally insane and sociopathic.

Privatized health care has its problems, but it's not that bad. It does lead to more R & D than state run hospitals, since private hospitals are more concerned with efficiency and effectiveness, especially in terms of competing with other hospitals. The failure here is a combination of poorly designed regulation, more poorly designed regulation to try and fix problems with earlier poorly designed regulation, and, yes, less than reputable private owners.

So at first you say its not that bad then describe a situation that is much worse...irony? You can have all the R&D in the world but that you can't honestly take care of infants and have the highest infant mortality rate in the First World with most of the First World being on a Socialized Health Care system then it is honestly time to do a gut check. You can kick around theorycrafting all you want but at the end of the day our Health Care system is beyond the point of broken.

That a majority of Americans in various polls have stated they put off going to the doctor because of the bills thus leading to an increase of more deadly diseases happening or even death that is a problem. That you have the Lower and Middle Class more worried about putting food on the table instead of taking care of themselves you have a broken Economic, Social and Health System.

 

[Doug]

Mostly because the only uses of socialism in nations thus far have been failures, unfortunately, people forget Sweden, socialism can be great if used with a democratic political system.

P.S. AMERICANS: Stop calling Obama a socialist. He is a capitalist, to be sure. Taking a step to the left is not automatically a socialist move, just like steps to the right are not necessarily fascist.

Well, their are degrees of socialism. For example, over here in UK land, a large part of our economy falls under the public sector, but the majority of it is private businesses. Not that our government is sane and smart enough to be trusted with that, of course.