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stella41b -> RE: the new socialism (2/9/2010 8:27:14 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: MrMister
I do not mean to be disrespectful of others views (and hopefully no one will take it as such and be disrespectful of me here), but in an honest attempt to better understand, I wanted to ask the following to anyone who is a socialist, or believes in socialism;
Okay, I'll bite.
quote:
ORIGINAL: MrMister
Based upon the definition given above, why is socialism a better avenue for our government to take, as opposed to our government providing an environment that enables us to better take care of ourselves?
Okay, let's take a typical family, mother, father and adult kids. We can be traditional here and say that the father is the head of the household and makes the decisions. He goes out to work, his wife goes out to work, as do both their adult children. The bills get paid, there's food on the table, both the adult kids study and the adult daughter is raising her own baby son. There's also grandmother living off a pension.
Father goes off fishing every other weekend, mother is interested in sewing and dressmaking, adult son likes listening to music and adult daughter is a keen photographer. However they all club together to help grandmother pay her bills and send her off to Florida twice a year. They also chip in to ensure the baby has all he needs.
If you understand this then you understand the essence of socialism - which is just like the family - everyone working for the common good. Work isn't a luxury or a privilege, it's a right and the worker is equipped to independently own the means of their labour, through a state education system which prepares you for occupation and employment. Welfare isn't something which replaces or is instead of work, but is there for those who cannot work, whether it be through age, sickness, whatever. You also have a universal public healthcare system, where you are treated in accordance with your symptoms and illness and not in accordance with your insurance coverage.
It's not a perfect system, one of the pitfalls in practice is the amount of planning required for adequate provision of public services, for example, and I would also argue that it requires a certain amount of social unity, and both social and economic stability for it to work, but it is certainly no worse a system than any other. It has worked (and is still working) in a number of countries, for example in Scandinavia where - contrary to what many Americans believe - it is not incompatible with either freedom of personal expression or capitalism.
Faced with some of the biggest threats in our history, not just widespread poverty, destitution and unemployment, but also organized crime and international terrorism, not to mention the demographic imbalance in the near future of having more elderly people than the working population, I feel it might also be the key to a solution.
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