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AmericanSocialism 4 - 13 Jan 2012 - Main.IanSullivan
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| | | American capitalism is a charade. If a years worth of bail-outs has not convinced you of that fact, I do not know what will. But, perhaps programs like Social Security, Medicare, Welfare, Medicaid might help convince you. Government subsidized loans. Need I continue? From a governmental standpoint, we are far closer to socialism than we ever have been. Is Obama a socialist? Who knows? He certainly is not a capitalist.
Fundamentally, one key aspect of “American socialism” gets it wrong. So wrong, in fact, that it threatens to do the whole system in. Here it is: The government paying for our social services has little operational control over those services and does not partake receive any revenue from said services. In a nutshell, every social service we have is contracted out. Do we have Government run health care? Not there yet. Instead, we have intricate and often arcane laws that either directly or indirectly subsidizes private health insurance. The government pays (in part) and private entities manage, provide, and profit. The economic incentives of private health care design, if we must go there, have always been profoundly perverse: private health providers skimp on product for profit (to benefit shareholders) and run opaque businesses. And why shouldn’t they? There is no free market and quality measurements to facilitate consumer choice are laughable. But, the truly fucked up aspect is this: tax money helps pay for these services and we get nothing in return. What we have is the axiom of anti-capitalism: You pay, they profit. And their profit never returns to the purse in the form of government taxes. |
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AmericanSocialism 3 - 20 Jul 2010 - Main.MatthewZorn
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| | American capitalism is a charade. If a years worth of bail-outs has not convinced you of that fact, I do not know what will. But, perhaps programs like Social Security, Medicare, Welfare, Medicaid might help convince you. Government subsidized loans. Need I continue? From a governmental standpoint, we are far closer to socialism than we ever have been. Is Obama a socialist? Who knows? He certainly is not a capitalist.
Fundamentally, one key aspect of “American socialism” gets it wrong. So wrong, in fact, that it threatens to do the whole system in. Here it is: The government paying for our social services has little operational control over those services and does not partake receive any revenue from said services. In a nutshell, every social service we have is contracted out. Do we have Government run health care? Not there yet. Instead, we have intricate and often arcane laws that either directly or indirectly subsidizes private health insurance. The government pays (in part) and private entities manage, provide, and profit. The economic incentives of private health care design, if we must go there, have always been profoundly perverse: private health providers skimp on product for profit (to benefit shareholders) and run opaque businesses. And why shouldn’t they? There is no free market and quality measurements to facilitate consumer choice are laughable. But, the truly fucked up aspect is this: tax money helps pay for these services and we get nothing in return. What we have is the axiom of anti-capitalism: You pay, they profit. And their profit never returns to the purse in the form of government taxes. | | | If the word is such a problem why do we need to use it? If american capitalism describes what you describe, so be it. It is what it is anyhow.
-- NonaFarahnik - 20 Jul 2010 | |
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I suppose because words are incredibly important things and they create connotations and ideas to the vast majority of the population. In my opinion, the only thing that stands in between socialized medicine and whatever trash we have now is the word 'social-' (insert your favorite suffix). Capitalism is okay with me too. A capitalist like purge would probably fix the system--let the banks, mortgage brokers, and what not who made bad bets lose them.
I guess my point here was that fundamental notions and linguistic deficiencies create perceptions that prevent us from seeing the mechanics of what is going on (i.e. the complete disappearance of the middle class). The whole rant was sort of an off-cuff stream of consciousness bit in honor of Bastille Day. Perhaps it would have been better and more interesting to discuss some of the historical parallels between 1788 France and 2010 USA.
Growing wealth disparities, tax exemptions, large national debt exacerbated by war, contempt from the upper classes...
-- MatthewZorn - 20 Jul 2010 | | |
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