If we don't adopt some socialist ideas now, America will wind up looking like ("communist") China.

[Poll_Blind]

Capitalism is good. I like capitalism. I believe in the capitalist system. Really.

But we have been terrible stewards of the capitalist idea and the predatory form of capitalism which America has been afflicted with and encouraged on itself is a caricature of it. It's no more a reflection of capitalism than communist China is a reflection of communism.

To the "let 'em die!" Repukes, we've got the fattest nanny state in the history of the world right now: America coddles, suckles and masturbates huge industrial, corporate and banking entities, some of which don't even spring from America and most of which do little or nothing to help out Americans. Tax breaks for corporations are always first-served at America's table.

But if I want real universal healthcare I'm a commie and armed thugs show up with their rifles at town halls? A "pony too far"?

Either we get things sorted out now or 10 years from now, 20 years from now, this place is going to be a Dickens novel with cellphones- but a Dickens novel all the same. Just like big parts of China right now.

We need universal healthcare, access to affordable prescription drugs, jobs and workplace protections and a sustainable energy policy. If socializing some or all of those things is necessary, so be it. The "job creators" aren't going to do fuck-all, that's for sure.

Bridges, roads in disrepair because the money's going to keeping our tanks and whirligigs blowing shit up in foreign countries for corporate interests while here at home I feel like this whole nation is a big juice box getting sucked dry and about to get squeezed hard a few more times before being tossed.

This is not a sustainable situation. There is no choice about that.

And so what's the answer for this year, next year, next 5 years, next 10 years? More tax breaks for the corporations?

Really? You kidding me?

PB

[SixthSense]

1. the breaks are just for BIG corps

little ones - like you would have if you decided to try your hand at starting a business - get the shaft

you need to be big enough to be able to ship a few thousand jobs overseas in order to get any of these "incentives"

[Poll_Blind]

3. Yeah, it seems like once you reach the size that you can start shipping jobs overseas....

...then you kick into high gear as a one of these vaunted "Job Creators". The irony!

PB

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. Capitalism is an unsustainable economic system

it's time to look to a post-capitalist model in the developed world, honestly. The basic assumption capitalist economies make of continually increasing economic growth is totally unrealistic given the very real constraints of limited resources and the fact that we live in a finite world. And I'd argue that the US model in fact represents pure capitalism or something much closer to it than in any other country; capitalism constrained by regulations, by a social safety net, by encouragement to sustainable development, as in much of Europe, is something else again.

[Poll_Blind]

6. Good point- but what's a workable post-capitalist model for America?

I see a future of either extreme poverty and a return to the jungle if we continue our ways or...some form of socialism for the stability and sustainability of certain basic necessities. But anything farther to the Left than that I can't see acceptable to me or the majority of Americans. Or is there some other way entirely?

PB

[Spider Jerusalem]

13. A workable model would require reversing 60 years of suburban development

which is part of the problem facing the US. Actually as far as sustainability goes the US is a nightmare. Not just suburban and exurban development that have driven reliance on cars and led to a lack of usable public transit, but excessive settlement in the West where over the long term the viability of any large settlements is going to become increasingly less due to issues over water; also the loss of arable land to development and the wrongheaded current trend of a significant portion of agricultural crops being earmarked for biofuels rather than food are all problematic, and that's not even getting into the shift from manufacturing, mining, agriculture and so on to a service economy which leads to a much greater reliance on international trade for the basic neccessities. The present American way of life is not sustainable in the long term and isn't presently sustainable at its existing level without low-cost foreign manufacturing and raw materials. So the answer is probably that things will take several generations to put right assuming a sustainable model can be found at all; honestly I rather expect that the outcome is going to be much more grim, with increasing resource issues and declining living standards leading to social unrest and very possibly the eventual fracturing of the US into smaller competing regional polities. Time will tell, although the lack of any positive action from either political party or from anyone in any position to offer real leadership is not encouraging; the idea of those in charge seems to be that no, things were fine before and we just need to get back to that somehow, while ignoring the very real problems inherent in that (humans generally seem to be incapable of long-range planning beyond a horizon of five years or so, which is another part of the problem).

[Lydia Leftcoast]

17. +1000

The only way the U.S. will survive is with a drastic reordering of our way of life.

The trouble is that so many people have their whole identities tied up in the accoutrements of suburban living and think of it as "the American Dream."

Living overseas in the late 1970s was a hugely educational experience for me. I learned that I didn't need all the things that everyone told me I needed to be happy, and the whole "American Dream" has seemed vaguely ridiculous to me since then.

[Poll_Blind]

19. Disheartening but I can't disagree with ya. n/t

PB

[OHdem10]

4. Please, Communist China is the most socialist country in the world.

The State controls businesses, some market oriented business.

The reason China has been able to weather the financial disaster
is their strong central control. They illustrated perfectly
how stimulus works and works well. They put a large large
stimulus into effect. They could avoid red tape because they
have central control. Large Stimulus, rapidly applied and
they are in GROWTH MODE.

Here in US, we have Corporatism. Business literally is running
things. Continue on our present path and bingo, Fascism.
Fascism is the Merger of State and Business with Business having
the power. Unfettered Capitalism can be just as dangerous as
an Unfettered Communism. The only difference is who runs the place.

Communism is merger of State and Business with the STATE HAVINB
the POWER.

The ideal or Goldilocks version is a mix of Capitalism and Socialism
Free Market Principles regulated in such a way as not to thwart
business or trample the individual citizen.

[hunter]

7. In China the state controls big business...

...in U.S.A. big business controls the state.

At some point it becomes difficult to distinguish between the two.

[Poll_Blind]

8. I mean the similarities to how individuals are powerless in each, how the....

...economic divide between the haves and have-nots is great.

I don't see all that much difference between a non-hereditary tyranny in China and the corporatism in America- which I see as a different route to the same control over the People.

PB

[OHdem10]

9. The Individual is just as powerless in Fascism(Corporatism)

[ChillbertKChesterton]

11. Ultimately, even a social-democratic welfare state which blends

capitalist relations of power with socialist safety nets, universal healthcare, redistribution of wealth, progressive taxation is unsustainable.

Look at European countries that Americans usually consider far more progressive, with better safety nets. They are going through the same economic and social crises that the US is facing.

It's going to take really sitting back, thinking, and coming up with something new. It's not enough to look at a buffet of options that have been tried and failed, we have to really come up with something radically different. A form of collective power and a space for action that is neither the state nor the markets.

[hunter]

15. I know, European nations are hell on earth.

My God! New moms there can take leave of work and get paid to BREASTFEED THEIR BABIES IN PUBLIC!!!

:grr:

[ChillbertKChesterton]

24. No doubt more democratic-socialism in the US would be far better

but it is far from the "solution", and the problems that intelligent conservatives (not fox news morons) point out about the welfare state are legitimate criticisms that highlight the real limits of "capitalism with a human face".

Of course we should support greater workers' rights and universal healthcare and a stronger safety net, but that isn't going to be the answer. Even if we get all these things, our system is still unsustainable in the long run, and I'm confident that we will see a major change from liberal-democratic-capitalism as we've known it in our lifetime.

We will see the collapse of the economic-social-political empire as we've known it, and more likely than not, what replaces it will be far worse.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

20. China is more fascist than Communist these days

Communism was supposed to be more like a system of cooperatives according to Marx's original vision.

China is not like the Soviet Union, where the state actually DID own all businesses. There was no private business in the Soviet Union for 70 years except for underground forms like the black market and the Russian Mafia. It was a stupid system, because it had no flexibility whatsoever. Centralized bureaucrats set production quotas for every consumer item, and if the factories met their quota, they were fine, whatever the demand for their product was. This led to local and national shortages of some items and absurd surpluses of other items, but the stores, which were also state-owned, could not raise or lower prices to move their merchandise.

Seventy years of this clumsy system taught people how to cope through barter and the black market, so the Shock Doctrine--"Presto-changeo, you're all capitalists now!"-- was terribly cruel to ordinary Soviet citizens. Their old coping skills no longer worked, and they had no time to develop new ones for the changed system. Furthermore, the old safety net was gone, and even old-age pensions were ravaged by runaway inflation. The only people who prospered were Party officials ("Hmm, I'll buy that factory, fire all the workers, and sell the machinery for scrap") and the Russian Mafia.

The Baltic countries of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia fared best under the transition, because they had been under Soviet rule for only 45 years, and Estonia in particular followed a more gradual approach of allowing small businesses first.

China was much more sensible. It began allowing small businesses in the 1980s, and since China had been under the Communists for only 30+ years at that point, there were still plenty of people around who knew how to run a business. There is a lot of enmeshing of the state and big business, but it's not the kind of total state control that existed in the Soviet Union. Even in 1990, there were plenty of privately owned stores and factories.

A system in which the state and big business work together to keep the people in line is fascism. (Nazism was an extreme form of fascism with the added element of virulent racism and anti-Semitism.) The Chinese may call themselves Communists, but what they practice is nothing like the Soviet system and even less like what Marx envisioned.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

26. The federated cooperatives idea was lifted by Marx from Proudhon.

Prior to Marx having issued vicious straw man polemics about Proudhon, he was an admirer and lifted his ideas of both scientific socialism and federated cooperatives.

China is what you would call a state capitalist enterprise as was the Soviet Union, but I agree that they were different. Neither of them were particularly socialist, just totalitarian (and fascist if you agree with the state/business merger aspect of them).

[hunter]

5. Recommended.

:kick:

[ChillbertKChesterton]

10. Žižek - Things cannot go on the way they are

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

[Poll_Blind]

12. Highly recommended- I have seen this guy a few times and I think he's got some interesting ideas.

And his Slovenian proverb (involving eyes) was hilarious.

:rofl:

PB

[ChillbertKChesterton]

23. He's got dozens of videos out talking about many issues

His analyses of the political situation and the crisis of capitalism is extremely insightful. His critiques of modern culture are spot on. I can't recommend him enough.

I've read most of his books and own about 6 of them

[hunter]

25. Žižek is not my taste.

Whenever I'm in the mood for an intellectual workout I pick up a science book.

For all our very fine words I can't convince myself that humans are exceptionally complicated animals. Chaos can arise in very simple systems. Our species happened to stumble into one of those maelstroms.

One hundred thousand years from now we'll be a peculiar layer of trash in the geologic record. Whoever digs us up will call us something like Homo vulgaris, the common ape, because our bones and our messes will be everywhere.

Until then, don't kick puppies. We're all puppies.

[Old and In the Way]

14. At the rate things are going, we'll be creeping toward a corporate command and control economy.

Through mergers and consolidations and no government oversight/anti-trust worries, there will eventually be a single corporate entity, lets call it Walmart-Koch-Exxon Amalgamated, LLC. (WAKOEXAM). It will be responsible for planning, production, and distribution of goods and services - basically in charge of all facets of the economy. The political arm of the corporation, the Republican Party, will be the only recognized party that can run people for office. By design, they will be incompetent, ineffectual, corrupted individuals who will pledge allegiance to WAKOEXAM. Privatized prisons will provide full employment - very competitive world-class, labor costs. The official new religion, The Church of Ayn Rand, will be required attendance where evangelicals will teach the Republican-Christian prosperity gospel. The individual will be given great lip service - but in reality, there will be no place for such a person in our brave, new society. The federal government, shrunk to the bathtub size that Grover Norquist envisioned will be continuously flogged as the root of all evil while WAKOEXAM dominates everything in our country. These churches will also serve as re-education/home schooling type centers - no more of those pesky, liberal art type public schools that teach subversive ideas. There will be no more of that socialized healthcare, either. If you have the money and connections, you live - if not, hey, you'll get to the Promised Land that much sooner!

It really won't be a lot different from Communist China, except the ruling class will be wearing business suits with diamond encrusted flag and cross lapel pins, instead of red stars on their Mao jackets.

[Johonny]

16. I totally disagree

In China the top political leaders are mostly Engineers and Scientists. That will happen here in the USA when monkeys fly out my ass.

[Selatius]

18. I would say the US is a lot closer to emulating Augusto Pinochet's Chile than modern China.

Pinochet was the ultimate free marketeer. He even privatized the nation's social security system.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

21. ...with the result that a lot of Chileans can't afford to retire

I keep telling this to right-wingers, but they come back with, "Are you saying that people don't know how to manage their own money?"

To which I say, "It's not that they don't know how. It's that they don't earn enough."

"Well, if they want to earn more, they should get better jobs..."

(Sigh) I'm sure you all know the drill by now.

[dkf]

22. Selling "universal healthcare" isn't going to work for Repubs.

It needs to be done as an overhaul of the healthcare system to save the budget of the United States.

Then you say the cheapest way to do it is to cover everyone early so they don't come in when the expensive measures must be taken.