| Terrified of "socialism?" First, define socialism. |
| Socialism simply means combining resources to produce or provide what each individual could not produce or provide on his own.
For example:
These are all examples of socialism. You can probably think of many more. Every developed country today employs some combination of capitalism and socialism. The only difference is where on the spectrum each falls. So the next time someone attempts to scare you with the threat of "socialism" ask them to define it, and/or provide examples. If they suggest a failed kleptocratic state (Venezuela, the USSR, etc.) ask for specific examples. When they are unprepared to provide specifics, respond with some examples that are a little closer to home. ---- Spinshield In countries where, since World War II, the principles of democratic socialism have shaped public policy (basically, everywhere in the developed world except here), the lives of the vast majority of citizens, most especially in regard to affordable health care, have improved enormously. {A}ll of them are, broadly speaking, places where — without any unsustainable burden on the national economy — the cost of health care per capita is far lower than it is here and yet coverage is universal, where life spans are longer, where working people are not made destitute by serious illnesses, where a choice between food or pharmaceuticals need never be made, where the poor cannot be denied treatments by insurance adjusters, where pre-existing health conditions could never be denied coverage, where most people have far more savings and much lower levels of debt than is the case here, where very few families live only a paycheck away from total poverty, where wages generally keep pace with inflation, where every worker has decent vacation time each year, where suicide and opioid addiction are not the default lifestyle of the working poor, where homelessness is exceedingly rare, where retirement care is humane and comprehensive and where the schools are immeasurably better than ours are. I can also tell the difference between Venezuela and today’s Germany, or the Scandinavian states, or France, or Britain, or Australia, or Canada (and so on). Americans, however, recoil in horror from these intolerable impositions on personal liberty. Some of us are apparently {. . .} canny enough to see the shadow of the death camps falling across the whole sordid spectacle. We know that civic wealth is meant not for civic welfare, but should be diverted to the military-industrial complex by the purchase of needless weapons systems or squandered through obscene tax cuts for the richest of the investment class. We know that working families should indenture themselves for life to predatory lending agencies. We know that, when the child of a working family has cancer, the child should be denied the most expensive treatments, and then probably die, but not before his or her family has been utterly impoverished. We call this, I believe, being free. And as long as we have access to all the military-grade guns we could ever need to fight off invasions from Venus, and to assure that our children will be slaughtered at regular intervals in their schools, what else can we reasonably ask for? Source: "Can We Please Relax About ‘Socialism’?" By David Bentley Hart - NY Times - 4/27/2019 |
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