how Obama is not a socialist? Because all of his political ideologies are directly correlated with socialistic government.

Socialism:

a. theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.

b. procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.

c. (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.


Which one of "Obama's political ideologies" directly correlate with the means of production being in the hands of workers or the community? Absolutely none.


Obama's "political ideologies" are "socialist" only in the nightmares of ignorant morons or the empty words of those who disagree with him and want to poison the well in the American political climate.

how Obama is not a socialist? Because all of his political ideologies are directly correlated with socialistic government.

Can you explain to me you and everyone else's irrational obsession with socialism?

Every highly-developed country that meets the top of the human development index is a social democracy. Countries that have consistently attempted radical free-market libertarianism have consistently ranked lower in literacy rates, wealth-poor gap, mortality rate, etc.

Also, this notion that social democracy, weak socialism, etc. equates with oppression is completely false.
Deregulation=/= freedom
regulation =/= oppression.
That is why it has consistently taken manipulation, coups, single-party rule, and foreign interference for radical libertarian economic principles to take effect in countries like Chile under pinochet, uruguay, brazil, indonesia, argentina, south africa, post-soviet russia( a complete human development disaster caused by uncontrolled capitalism), China, Bolivia, etc.

Money is power. In any given democracy, most people make below or slightly above average income. A tendency among the people to redistribute excess wealth and favor a safety net and social programs is a natural function of democracy.

China and Russia, for example, have managed to keep the elites elite and make the poor even poorer by applying capitalism while giving rights to privatization to party elites and destroying necessary protections for workers like healthcare, medical leave, labor unions, overtime pay, and safe working conditions.

One of these days I'm going to make a really long thread demystifying all this bullshit against the left.

Finally: You live in a fucking socialistic government and YOUR life is better because of it and a lot more people have a chance at a more level playing field and a society that upholds social mobility and take some measures to foster competition between the driven, hard-working people and those that won the genetic lottery. This whole notion that socialism only punishes the rich to reward the lazy is fucking bullshit.

Money is power. In any given democracy, most people make below or slightly above average income. A tendency among the people to redistribute excess wealth and favor a safety net and social programs is a natural function of democracy.

Redistribution of wealth is only a "natural function of democracy" in it's most unaltered sense; that is democracy simply being majority rule. However, this is arguable because 500BC Athens defined democracy and yet did not favor any type of redistribution.

The United States operates under majority rule as long as it does not infringe upon the rights of the minority. To prevent an oppressive majority federalists framers, such as Madison, constructed the constitution to be a mix of elite and popular democratic ideas. This is apparent by the split of congress into two seperate chambers. The House of Representatives being the popular democratic branch (shorter terms = more persuasion by the public), and the Senate representing the more elite view of democracy. The House checks the Senate and visa versa.

With that being said I don't think it is even possible to argue that taking money away from the minority and giving it to the majority is a function of American democracy. As a matter of fact I would say that such actions parallel that of the struggle between debtors and creditors back when Europeans were first coming to the United States.

Redistribution of wealth is only a "natural function of democracy" in it's most unaltered sense; that is democracy simply being majority rule. However, this is arguable because 500BC Athens defined democracy and yet did not favor any type of redistribution.

The United States operates under majority rule as long as it does not infringe upon the rights of the minority. To prevent an oppressive majority federalists framers, such as Madison, constructed the constitution to be a mix of elite and popular democratic ideas. This is apparent by the split of congress into two seperate chambers. The House of Representatives being the popular democratic branch (shorter terms = more persuasion by the public), and the Senate representing the more elite view of democracy. The House checks the Senate and visa versa.

With that being said I don't think it is even possible to argue that taking money away from the minority and giving it to the majority is a function of American democracy. As a matter of fact I would say that such actions parallel that of the struggle between debtors and creditors back when Europeans were first coming to the United States.

I don't mind the wealthiest minority paying the highest tax rate, because the way I see it they extract the most benefit from society. Someone at the poverty level may get some assistance amounting to hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. At the same time they are still contributing to society. They are consumers of various products, trickling up the very wealth that was distributed to them. Someone very poor is likely not a manager or has people working under him, gets less out of the education system, lives in neighborhoods with less protection, and doesn't rely on a judicial system to defend their intellectual property because they likely have none. The non-contributors are the homeless, and as far as I know homeless vagabonds don't get welfare checks, and they live off of everyone's discarded trash. Giving poor people enough aid not to live on the streets is a net benefit, leading to that much less crime and instability. In the various latin american revolutions where social democracies were overthrown with US funding in favor of elimination of every benefit, leaving millions in squalor.

Who are the wealthiest? They are people with vast quantities of pieces of paper given value by the government(fiat) and its relative value. Without the complexities of society it's worthless. They have lots of people working under them, educated by the American school system. They themselves and their children may go to private schools, but their workforce, their market, their defenders(police and legal), are not.
When their large commercial fleets of vehicles hit the road, their extra wear and tear on the road among the millions of other drivers in smaller cars paying the same gas tax. Intellectual property, the stuff of patents and copyright are a huge deal, probably the biggest beneficiaries of society. Business revolving around that is worthless without a powerful judicial system and a police force willing to arrest violators. In a lot of third world countries it's hard to find legitimate copies of software and music and movies because little is done to enforce these laws. Bootlegs are sold openly. Even if they pay their due court fees, they put a big strain on the system.

Then there is security. Living in a society as stable as ours without mass kidnappings, mass murder, car bombs, etc. An army that deters everyone, and a host of other protections is an important business advantage that keeps most people from switching their headquarters to fucking Somalia or something.

Lastly, a natural tendency of business is to keep the top people on top. If they are the best of the best, this is not necessarily bad. What happens is monopolies form, collusion occurs, competitors fail, etc. I think it's absurd not to tax heavily a business that may not have made it to where it was if a monopoly or oligarchy had taken control of the playing field and not let them rise to the top. Taxing is just another thing that keeps them in check. Unfortunately, according to this book (http://www.amazon.com/Perfectly-Legal-Campaign-Rich-Everybody/dp/1591840694/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226200360&sr=8-1) and various other sources, companies abuse the legal system and bribe politicians into allowing shockingly low tax rates to be paid. When businesses skimp on taxes, the middle class subsidizes it.

People understand that money is power, and when you vote for redistribution you're redistributing power, lest the minority get too much control of the majority ;)

I would cringe every time McCain attempted to spin joe the plumber(shill) and "spread the wealth around". Anyone that bothered to watch the whole explanation would have a different sentiment about the whole thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFC9jv9jfoA

Especially when it goes in and out of joe's ears that without a tax break his customers would have less money to call him for simple repairs, and he'd have less business.

how is he not a socialist, I don't know exactly, I'm going to take a wild shot in the dark. When all of the 60's radicals registered to vote, because they registered democrat, and they were practically communist, they were at first overlooked. Now that they've "cut their teeth", and "payed their dues", they've became more prominent in the party. Because of this switch, which contributed to the slow radicalization of the democratic party, they went further and further towards big government, until Obama seems normal for that party. He's practically socialist according to most, and he votes with his party line 97% of the time, perhaps this means the line is socialist through and through.
Now to answer a question: if all the radicals joined the party, why aren't the democrats using their methods? Answer: Although they've ditched the violent methods of the 60's radicals they've stuck with the rhetoric, attitudes, habits and general strategies. For examples: every problem must be treated as the moral equivalent of war mentality (the war on poverty, etc.) , calling opponents fascist, racist, sexist, homophobic at the drop of a hat basing it on shaky evidence (at best, down right farcical preconceptions at worst), and finally a sort of "cult of action".
This is only my assessment, I'm not really sure of the accuracy, would someone tell me if I'm even in the general ballpark of the whole matter.

I'll take socialism over capitalism which has concentrated wealth in the hands of the very few while the middle class has been able to barely thrive and the poor have zero chance as usual.

Fuck this "me" system, it's shit, it's always been shit, it'll always be shit.

post-soviet russia( a complete human development disaster caused by uncontrolled capitalism)
------
China and Russia, for example, have managed to keep the elites elite and make the poor even poorer by applying capitalism while giving rights to privatization to party elites and destroying necessary protections for workers like healthcare, medical leave, labor unions, overtime pay, and safe working conditions.


Russia was a fucking tragedy.
For quite possibly the first time, there was a chance to start from scratch.
To create a 'capitalist' society from scratch without there being the remains of pre-industrial aristocracy, without there being a concentration of wealth among heirs to fortunes made during industrialization.
There was a clean slate - an industrialized nation, not in good shape mind you, but industrialized nonetheless and the opportunity to bring in a free market economy and actually begin with a somewhat equitable distribution of wealth.

And that opportunity was thrown away.
Yeltsin, and every one of the ideologically driven western advisers who were there advising him during the whole process deserve to burn in hell for what they did to the country.

They could have incorporated the soviet industries and ran them for profit. Brought in managers from overseas if they really needed too.
Hell, if they really wanted to they could give out dividends (like oil in alaska) to everyone.
But no, the little imps proclaimed their faith in the magical power of markets.

A sane person might think that maybe law and order and the general restoration of normality after a systemic collapse might be a little higher on the order of priorities, but no.
Must privatize! the markets will do the rest! never mind that the whole political apparatus was still corrupt as hell or that the voucher system for distributing ownership was insane and doomed to failure given the state of the country.
The loans scheme was insane. This was the 90s! The government could have sourced foreign investment given the assets they could offer as security! at the very least they could have had proper share floats and got a fair price for the equity that they ended up basically giving away!
Instead they sold off their nations wealth for a pittance and created the sort of wealth gap that normally takes generations to come about.

Okay, rant a bit. But it's bloody horrible.

im not saying socialism is bad, but first off, i dont agree with turning our economy socialist when we are capitalist. second, shit i forgot what i was going to say.......

oh i remembered! we cant possibly sustain socialism in a country of this magnitude. it just wont work. it will crumble easily and we will be worse off than before.

Free Health-Care =/= Socialism

^ And he's not even offering "Free Healthcare" so the idea is even more fucking ridiculous.

Russia was a fucking tragedy.
For quite possibly the first time, there was a chance to start from scratch.
To create a 'capitalist' society from scratch without there being the remains of pre-industrial aristocracy, without there being a concentration of wealth among heirs to fortunes made during industrialization.
There was a clean slate - an industrialized nation, not in good shape mind you, but industrialized nonetheless and the opportunity to bring in a free market economy and actually begin with a somewhat equitable distribution of wealth.

And that opportunity was thrown away.
Yeltsin, and every one of the ideologically driven western advisers who were there advising him during the whole process deserve to burn in hell for what they did to the country.

They could have incorporated the soviet industries and ran them for profit. Brought in managers from overseas if they really needed too.
Hell, if they really wanted to they could give out dividends (like oil in alaska) to everyone.
But no, the little imps proclaimed their faith in the magical power of markets.

A sane person might think that maybe law and order and the general restoration of normality after a systemic collapse might be a little higher on the order of priorities, but no.
Must privatize! the markets will do the rest! never mind that the whole political apparatus was still corrupt as hell or that the voucher system for distributing ownership was insane and doomed to failure given the state of the country.
The loans scheme was insane. This was the 90s! The government could have sourced foreign investment given the assets they could offer as security! at the very least they could have had proper share floats and got a fair price for the equity that they ended up basically giving away!
Instead they sold off their nations wealth for a pittance and created the sort of wealth gap that normally takes generations to come about.

Okay, rant a bit. But it's bloody horrible.

This economic enslavement is a recurring thing. Post apartheid South Africa was treated the same way. Nelson Mandela and his followers hoped for a marshal plan type doctrine to rebuild africa, and he was consistently told by the economic community that privatization was the way of the modern world(and this is true, but for the wrong reasons). South Africa was told that it would be forced to repay all debts accrued over the apartheid period. Eventually even the central bank was privatized, rendering south africa worse off than before and giving racist shitheads another case study of black failure, when it was really whites that sabotaged the economy on the way out.

Obama said "spread the wealth" no share it. He says he wants to "create" opportunity no garentee it.

If he really believed in socialism then he would want to create free schools and free healthcare, no making it easier to get.

He was a community organizer, which means he spent a good portion of his life working with the poor which eplains why he has the views that he has.

This economic enslavement is a recurring thing. Post apartheid South Africa was treated the same way. Nelson Mandela and his followers hoped for a marshal plan type doctrine to rebuild africa, and he was consistently told by the economic community that privatization was the way of the modern world(and this is true, but for the wrong reasons). South Africa was told that it would be forced to repay all debts accrued over the apartheid period. Eventually even the central bank was privatized, rendering south africa worse off than before and giving racist shitheads another case study of black failure, when it was really whites that sabotaged the economy on the way out.

But Russia wasn't even a case of westerners getting in on it.
It was just a massive clusterfuck. A bunch of Russians got stupendously rich for no good reason whatsoever.