Kudos to David Lightman and William Douglas at McClatchy for their article about the Republicans crying “Socialism!”. It’s on the money, with one major exception. It’s good to see mainstream media reporters calling out political distortions.
A Republican activist in a St. Louis suburb expressed the McCain campaign’s fervent wish:
“Make no mistake… this campaign is a referendum on socialism.”
And also on Nazis, baby-killers, and the plague! I’m worried that Barack is pro-bubonic! (What? I never said I thought Barack was pro-bubonic! That is absolutely a lie!)
What issue has aggravated the true Republicans enough to release the hounds? Taxing the rich, of course. If that’s not socialism, what is?
Favoring higher tax rates for the wealthy than for the less fortunate isn’t socialism, and if it is, then the U.S. has been a socialist country for nearly a century, under both Democrats and Republicans.“The answer is clearly no, Senator Obama is not a socialist,” said Paul Beck, a professor of political science at The Ohio State University. “We’ve had a progressive tax system for some time, and both Republicans and Democrats have bought into it.”
Socialism involves state ownership of the means of economic production and state-directed sharing of the wealth. America’s democratic capitalist system is neither socialist nor pure free market; rather, it mixes the two, and it has at least since the progressive income tax was introduced 95 years ago. Under it, the wealthy pay higher income tax rates than those who are less fortunate do. It’s a form of sharing the wealth.
Government intervenes in U.S. “free markets” all the time. The deduction that homeowners get for mortgage interest is one form, for it subsidizes housing. The Pentagon procurement that sustains U.S. defense contractors such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics is another.
For that matter, President Bush and many other Republicans, including McCain, backed a massive federal government rescue of ailing financial institutions this fall, one that’s committed more than $1 trillion so far to “private” banks, even taking partial state ownership of the nine biggest.
And they note the repetitious behavior:
Conservatives often charge that Democrats are engaging in “class warfare” when they want to raise tax rates on the rich — McCain and Palin have used the phrase to attack Obama — but they rarely find such fault when tax cuts disproportionately benefit the wealthy. Nevertheless, the “socialist” charge against Obama sticks with some voters.
Mainly with those euphemistically called “low information voters”.
Though most of the description is accurate, it’s not true that “socialism involves state ownership…”. State socialism certainly does, but not libertarian socialism. Americans have sat on the couch, and valued the remote, and believed the ads, for so long, many of them can’t even imagine controlling their own lives; but theoretically it is possible for people to take of themselves without relying on corporations and armies.
In fact, given the approaching ecological disaster, for which Americans get most of the blame, doing things locally is likely to become extremely popular over the next couple of decades. Invest in green now, because oil and steel are on the way out.
I'm not sure why the isms get such a bad rap either. Personally I'm in favor as well as against all of them, as long an no particular one of them is carried too far. That one is the one I'm clearly against, at least for the moment. Right now it is pure unregulated free market capitalism (we've certainly let that child run all over the world neighborhood getting our family into loads of trouble), but tomorrow it might be socialism. It all depends on who's in charge of the hen house.
But we certainly can have all the socialism we desire. here Here in America we just call it something else and the rest of us will find it quite satisfying. If you can supply me the name of the writer of the quote, I'll owe you a beer, but there was a writer of the 1920's who said that Americans will take all the socialism that you give them, as long as you provide it with a name other than socialism.
We do have our social security, at least for now, which is the most aptly named federal program ever created.
My fslr, sol and solf haven't been doing so well lately which are indeed modest by anyone's standards, but they haven't been the stellar performers recently that one would think they should be. But I've bought them recently, meaning within the last month or two, except for the FSLR which I got in somewhat early on a year and a half or so ago, and am still a ways ahead on. I'm sort of with Buffet on the technology business, but I'm with Tiny Tim on investment in green stocks: All I need is just one more one hit wonder.
But WFI (Waterfurance International) on the Toronto exchange or WFIFF on the pink sheets for American buyers looks like a long term winner as well as the Wind technology fund, the ticker for which I forget the name of. Of the ten to fifteen thousand others, I seem to forget most of them right now. LDK and GE also come to mind. Although GE has its hands in many pots.
Unless you're talking about investing your life and not your funds. Their is a fundamental difference in the two approaches. We are going to buy a ground source heat pump for this old house. In some ways that's an investment, but not in the traditional capitalist sense since the old oil furance and heat pump are about 30 years old an need replacing badly anyway. But for us it just makes good sense financially. I don't regard that as an investment. I regard it as buying the right tool for the job.
But maybe we'll put that off until they incentivize the incentives. Right now they are still somewhat lousy.
I guess I'm just not an ism guy. Any country that takes them on creates a problem for itself. They all can get corrupted by the people who put themselves in charge of running them. And quite often do.
Posted by: Buck on October 22, 2008 8:19 AM