What an entertaining thread. All those (US) contributors who hate socialism but haven't a clue what it means. Brilliant. I noticed the usual brain dead statements have appeared about stealing from the rich, taxes is stealing etc etc. Only in America is such nonsense spoken with such passion. I wonder where it comes from?

socialism is

creating so many taxes and rules and regulations that no one can afford to get ahead of their own hard work and effort. small business becomes a thing of the past because it can't survive the plethora of taxes, permits, licenses and other red tape, designed to take their money and give to someone else. which has already happened. thus the era of superstores and the end of mom and pop stores.

Sweden is an example of socialism that works very, very well. Same with The Netherlands to some extent. If you have never travelled to these countries, you should go see for yourself.


I'm afraid that would be difficult since the American working people aren't even allowed a decent vacation. Sweden, Norway and Denmark have a right to a four week vacation each year and also vages to make it possible to go places. The only travelling experience the regular American worker has a chance to experience is by joining the army and going to Afghanistan or Iraq. But hey . . . the return fare is already arranged for . . . in a body bag.

Originally posted by cognoscente

Originally posted by Pjotr
In Holland we seem to be the most productive per head per year, but we work less hours, so we are more effective. You would call outr country socialist (left from Obama), but we still don't, so it is a matter of perspective. The American dream is still an option in Europe. Strange HUH.
So we work harder in a smaller amount of time and are RICHER per head. Hmmm...so also when you pay taxes there is a reason to work (I know, I work hard, earn a lot and am sill very happy, and proud to be contributing to one of the healthiest econimies of this world)

While that may be true, I'd just like to note that everyone in Europe is forced to take long holidays; that is what produces the lower level of working hours. And so when you compare what remains of work hours with those of countries such as the U.S. and Japan, you come to a substantially biased figure of productive output. However, the holidays might help efficiency in the long run. Holland and other closely related European countries may produce at much higher levels of the intellectual output than those of the aforementioned workaholic countries. So the difference between the two systems is either too subtle or untranslatable to give a fair perspective of differences in both societies in terms of levels of industrial and other producible outputs.

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Look, the bottom line is that any political body truly does not take into account the well being of its citizenry. It will, however, make exceptions for its constituency, but then only the minimum in order to remain in power. The political body is only interested in preserving and strengthening in its own power base. This has been true for all of human social history. So the fact that a voter in this upcoming election would be torn between either party, on the basis of some feigned sense of Socialism and how it would apply to that individual directly, is being completely mislead. I'm not entirely sure how each party differs in their social policies, but I know the Republicans at this point in time simply aren't capable of providing any sort of social welfare to its national constituents. They just aren't in the position. The party itself isn't unified over the issue. Actually, if the Republicans do manage to make it into office this term, we can expect to see some violent infighting among the party, which could manifest in the 2012 election. The event might conjure images of Teddy Roosevelt and Taft, with the formation of a progressive Republican party, ultimately culminating in Republican defeat that election year. Actually that happened in 1912. Spooky connection anyone? The formation of a progressive Republic base seems to be occurring at this moment.

What hurts the most is that an individual will vote for some party based on ideological principles. This is absurd. ......

People that vote on ideological principle alone are either rich and bored, or poor and complacent. They need to something to fill themselves, to grasp on to, which could potentially fill the void where the individuality of a person usually resides.

[edit on 1-11-2008 by cognoscente]

Thank you for your intelligent response. I agree on almost all points (be it that vacation is of course not forcedi Holland, it is possible in a lot of situations to lose your vacationdays if you just don't spend them and further you free to work on other stuff in your vacation, I am a entrepeneur, so I work a lot more than average because I love it. How this influences the graphs I don't know). I tried to put some of your thought in words in other threads. As it is not my native tongue, I am not able to put it so eloquently. I like your vision of progressive republicans.

The major point you touch -and I think that it would be worth a thread on its own- is the notion that we (ATS-ers from all around) carry all these political ideas an terminologies with us and vote for them while that is sort of cruelty against reality in itself, and of course these ideas obviously mean or represent different things in different countries, loaded with all the cultural biases that we carry in our own countries.

Instead of talking about the nineteenth century terminology we should try to work with other words that are not yet powerbased, but are kind of neutral, like central control vs decentral and personal initiative vs hierachial control. Welbeing of all vs welbeing of nr1. These are counterpoints of dynamics that play a strong role in all the old political ideologies.

I noticed while visiting corporate global leaderclasses and such as a outsider that these terms are used a lot to get a grip on what is happening in the world.
Leading question:
How do you financially steer in a world where you cannot see the future.

First you have to set the desired future with images you know.
For that you would use extremes like the given values. For instance you do not want total centralization or total decentralization, because they both carry to much negative connotations. And if you are really good at it, you do not want to compromize. So how do you reach your optimum getting the best out of both?

In a way politics does this FOR people. They depict the situation, the set up the desired future, and they tell you they know the way to get there, which they obviously don't. But before you get this, they have filled you with all the obstacles you will have to conquer (your enemies), for instance "socialism" or "welfare", people eating or spending your money or people buying firearms whatever it doesn't matter, you are lost. They set the standards of your thought level, while all you want is to be happy ...which would only mean normally: some friends, some work you like, some food you like, a little money to spend...learn something new etcetera..

I is not that difficult to achieve and if we just would learn to behave, it would be achieved.

To come back to your phrase:"The political body is only interested in preserving and strengthening in its own power base"

In principle that goes for any "body", but that does not mean that there are certainly people with a littel more weight in the conscientious mode. Mostly theze types get tired after a while being in politics, some hold on for a long time. I have seen and met a few, and they are something to witness. Don't give up on them.