It's paid for by taxation of one sort or another - same as US but in different forms.

The difference is that we don't spend it all on weapons, we spend the money on social welfare programmes.

We could do the same as the US, but our citizens would suffer unnecessarily as a consequence of massive military spending.

I think that is one of the main differences.

I live in Norway, and our government is Social Democratic. We pay our taxes, and those taxes helps pay for free education and health care - we do not get "freebies". I think the system works just fine, and you will never ever hear me complain about having to pay my taxes.

UN has also named Norway as the world' best country to live in six years in a row, from 2001 - 2006.

The lie comes also from a lot of right-wing parties calling themselves x-socialist-x/whatever.
So for example, in a country you'll have two main parties opposing, one beeing the PS/Socialist party and the other, the PSD, Social Democrat Party.
Same labels go on in the EU parliament.
The lines become blurred, one of course is classic left, but the others decided it was time to drop the capitalist / liberal / globalist label. Kinda hypocrit, really, but then again, so is the way americans will use socialism as an euphemism for communism.
The world isn't either white or black, there's a lot of shades of grey in between.
Maybe, if you don't want to look at definitions, you should try consider "socialism" as a system that cares for its citizens, instead of caring only for army, high-interest industry or corrupt bankers.

Originally posted by Frankidealist35
I guess you people in Europe have less crazy politicians than we do and are able to trust them more. We, on the other hand aren't so lucky.

Much of that stems from the extreme capitalism ideology, the fact that most politicians in the US are big business men and that getting into politics for many of them is another means to make more profit.

Our politicians can still be stupid and sometimes corrupt.

Its just a different system.

Where the US spends its citizens income tax on the military and expansion - countries with social policies invest that money in their populations.

Both obviously work in their own ways. Whichever one is better is a matter of perspective.