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Showing Original Post only (View all)Chris Matthews delivers the damn smartest reply I have seen to the "Socialist" accusation [View all]
from his closing remarks on Tuesday's Hardball:
MATTHEWS: Well, Democratic are kibitzing a lot right now about socialism
versus capitalism. For me, it`s brought back the conversations I had with
East Germans three decades ago. And those days in November of 1989, when
the Berlin wall was coming down, I wanted to hear their story of why their
system in East Germany had failed.
Well, the people I spoke with were not enemies of the East German system.
They were just the opposite, the system`s true believers factory
managers and school principals. They were loyal to the ideals of an
equitable society and also, they made clear to me, its victims.
And while they accepted the modest incomes provided by the East German
state, they faced a daily humiliation by a government that sent them, the
people who made the system work, to the back of the line, while the
hustlers, opportunists and exploiters of the system grabbed all the good
life. Well, the good East Germans watched tourists go to the hotels and
restaurants run by the government that refused the currency each Germans
were paid with. They had to wait 18 months for the delivery of the lousy
cars the country made.
And the lesson to me was clear a system fails when if doesn`t provide
economic justice to the very people who make it work. We in this country
have succeeded magnificently in terms of economic efficiency. Our system
of mixed capitalism, free markets alongside an evolving social safety net
of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment compensation, together
with antitrust, environmental, and other business regulations have made
this country what it is today.
But we better be on alert to the need to adjust the balance between the
power of the marketplace and the need to soften and offset its power. We
need to insure that those hurt or passed over by capitalist enterprises get
treated fairly. This isn`t complicated. It`s not a choice between
capitalism and socialism, it`s finding the right combination, and that`s
what the debates of this year and next will largely be about.
http://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/hardball/2019-03-12
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We don't want crony capitalism. We want capitalism prime.