And since I'm on this...

[jsbowden]

Why the fuck are we so anti socialist anyway? Last time I looked, those semi socialist Germanic and Nordic states have the highest standards of living anywhere on the planet, and the highest per capita income levels to match. We can skip the nanny statism that comes with it, but the fiscal policy? It appears to be sound and work extremely well.

Comments

[missysedai.livejournal.com]

I certainly wasn't unhappy or deprived in Germany.

[omarius.livejournal.com]

I say because it's so hard to have the one without the other. Power flow towards the federal government is one way. It's like a black hole--any powers, rights, or responsibilities that flow from the people & the states into its event horizon will become part of its mass forever.

Citizens, states, and corporations (which influence the country in that order, BTW) can be controlled and regulated by government--but once any sector of power is the government's own, there is no higher authority to appeal to when someone screws things up.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

Under unrestrained capitalism, our rights, our income, our standard of living, and our healthcare are flowing away. The only thing we are clinging to is "at least it's not socialism".

[(Anonymous)]

That I don't disagree with. The hard part is, what do we do about it? We have mega-everything: mega-corporations, mega-government, mega-mass culture...there's no moral component at the mega level, only the ethic of expedience and profit.

At least it's not socialism, but it's not as good as it ought to have been. I'm a Jeffersonian; I believe we should rule ourselves from the bottom up. But the entire culture thinks otherwise.

[(Anonymous)]

PS, this is omarius.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

It's cultural remnants of the days when the Red Scare was everywhere. And we still have bugaboos like Cuba to scare the kids.

[prince-corwin.livejournal.com]

We can skip the nanny statism that comes with it,

I am not at all convinced that this is the case.

Uppermost in your mind, when presenting this sort of thing, should be a very simple question: "What if we get all this in place, and then find out that the Republicans got voted into power? How might this sort of thing be abused?"

[askesis.livejournal.com]

We're not anti-socialist: we just carried out a series of the biggest nationalizations in history!

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

It's just the banking system. No big deal.

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

Citizens in Norway, Switzerland and Luxembourg are indeed more wealthy than their American cousins. But these countries are all inhabited by workaholics, and Norway has free oil in addition. Most European countries have less income per head, it is just more equally distributed.