92% of Americans prefer Sweden's "socialistic" economic system

a reply to: Edumakated

I see what your saying, and what it's a very sick sociopathic way of determining the worth of people and is why capitalism needs to be seriously rebuild from the ground up or scrapped and replaced entirely by something else.

Here's why, can you, and be honest here think of something a person can do to make them worth more than a million times what someone else who puts in a full weeks work as a person? Because there are individuals making that and then some.

If not than tell me in what reasonable sense it makes a for a person to receive that much more of the worlds resources than they have?

I'm not saying there aren't people that deserve more than others. Clearly they do. But the system we have takes it to ridiculously broken extremes.

The issue I have with capitalism is it takes people and turns them into nothing more than numbers and that simply is sick and forgets that there are actually people attached to those numbers.

It makes excuses for extreme gaps in how people are treated by using math, and it does so by completely discounting the human aspect.

It completely ignores the fact that society exists not for profit, and not for the individual. It exists for the people within it as a whole. There's nothing wrong with people within a society being rewarded for contributing more. In fact it's a good thing, positively reinforcing good behavior is a great thing. The problem comes when we do so at the expense of forgetting the purpose of society in the first place, mutual protection and care. A people united against a harsh world that cares not one iota about a single one of us. When we put individual success above caring for each other in importance we've stopped being civil and turned into solitary predators and became the enemy of society as we now put preying upon each other ahead of caring for each other, we've put protecting ourselves above protecting each other. When you get rewarded by society it should be because you've done more to help it than others, not because you've found ways to take more from others.

What we have today is predatory in nature, it's anything but civil or civilized, and it makes a mockery of the term society. If we were truly civil we'd make sure the people at the bottom are taken care of and comfortable first, and then reward from there, happy that the extra rewards we receive are because we contribute to society and it's purpose, not prey upon it like some sick parasite.

Addendum: If a person is actively contributing to society or have in a meaningful way for an extended period, they deserve at minimum that which society is supposed to offer by the very act of being a society. The protection and care of the society they contribute to. It should be an inalienable right. When people say a job does not deserve a living wage, they are saying that person has not earned to be included in our society as their contributions are unworthy of the very basics society is supposed to offer to its contributing members.

a reply to: seasonal

Guess what? 100% of people would like their health care to be free too. I know I would, but when you get down to brass tacks and break down the true costs of "free" (read socialist) health care, most people suddenly decide it isn't all that great anymore and the reported support for it drops a lot.

Simply showing people a pie chart graph is great, but when you get to the brass tacks about how this pie chart is achieved and what the reality of it would be ... I'll bet your support for it would likewise drop.

a reply to: seasonal

well u should be regretting the repeal of glass steagle also.. And the passage of Nafta as well.

but c'mon I mean every society has that. think about it... its the worst in India. also if you live in America, you
're doing better than most of the rest of the world.

a reply to: Puppylove

Actually, yes.

Sadly enough all capitalism is a is free exchange of goods and services. What any good or service you provide is worth is what someone else is willing to exchange you for it. If a bunch of other people do exactly what you do as well as you can do it, then no one is going to exchange much for that good or service. That is simple economic laws and reality.

Economics is math, not compassion. That's just the way it is and the way it works.

a reply to: Puppylove
You wish for us to undue nature?

Bold move Cotton, let's see how it plays out.

a reply to: ketsuko

Which is why capitalism needs to die and be replaced by something else. It's not civilization, it's a wolf in sheep's clothing masquerading as civilization.

Capitalism spits upon the social contract which is the backbone of any true civilization by placing the individual's rights over that of everyone else.

a reply to: peck420

Undue nature? No I wish us to be social creatures that beat nature by banding together and working to help each other, a tried and true mechanism for surviving and thriving in our harsh world, and the very thing that made us a success.

We're in a constant competition with our civil nature that made us the powerhouse we are by strength of numbers and unity, and falling back to our most basest natures and becoming individuals that give up the strength of numbers and unity for personal gain.

originally posted by: Puppylove
a reply to: ketsuko

Which is why capitalism needs to die and be replaced by something else. It's not civilization, it's a wolf in sheep's clothing masquerading as civilization.

Capitalism spits upon the social contract which is the backbone of any true civilization by placing the individual's rights over that of everyone else.

Sorry, capitalism will not die. You can attempt to outlaw it, but it will always exist. So long as one person has or does something that others need, they will find a way to create an acceptable exchange.

Oh and ... uh ... basic capitalism is what allows for civilizations in the first place. When we all started trading what we had and exchanging our goods and services, we created the ability to rise above mere subsistence level and specialize which allowed for all kinds of things including for people like Marx to sit around and navel gaze a lot and decide that the very foundations of civilized society were evil because humanity did not function like hive insects in their social organization.

I would however add that no one and nothing in the US prevents you from getting together with a bunch of like-minded people, pooling your resources and creating a commune that is as self-sustaining as you can make it. Of course, you will have to engage in some dirty capitalism with the outside world in order to have a few things, but there are a lot of things a farming commune can learn to make and do to sustain itself nearly entirely.

So what's stopping you?

a reply to: Puppylove

CEO's can make huge difference in a company compared to the average workers. Choices they make can destroy a company or have it dominate market share. They make a vision of the what the company is. If they mess up thousands of jobs can be lost.

What bothers me more is that government paper pushers make as much or more than the people in building trades and factory workers. worthless drones vs wealth creating individuals.

a reply to: ketsuko

No cooperation and working together and caring about each other is what made civilization. Capitalism was a tool that helped civilization grow and expand.

Ok fine I'll admit it's not capitalism that's the problem, it's unchecked capitalism that is. Capitalism is fine and good so long as it doesn't come at the expense of the bigger picture that is a society united for mutual care and protection.

So society needs a mix of socialism and capitalism. The trick is finding the right balance.

The issue is and frustration we have is because our current system has failed in maintaining the basic social contract required to call us truly civilized.

"The best measure of a society is determined by the treatment of lowest among them" Is a probably not exact quote, but is from someone somewhere and it's a good one.

Show me a society today you'd considered successful by that standard.

a reply to: Puppylove

Well that comes with morality, but we're not allowed to teach that anymore. It's to religious.

So we threw that baby out with the bathwater and now we try to legislate it (socialism) which obviously doesn't work.

You want a society that cares about others and respects them, then you need one that is moral and morality is not an issue of economics.

a reply to: ketsuko

Quite a bit actually. It would be a long list and stupid for me to do because I consider myself a part of the "society" I live in and care about the other people in it. I think we all deserve to have the social contract fulfilled the world over. I see humanity as one people. I'm not going to be satisfied with anything less.

Are we civilized and work together or are we savages who prey on each other?

I know which of the two paths I'm fighting for.

a reply to: jellyrev

Yep and if they screw the pooch they get millions to leave.

The Federal workers pay is closer to keeping up with the cost of living increases, you too can be a federal worker or paper pusher.

a reply to: ketsuko

What people seem to ignore is that it does'nt work. It is getting worse and will only affect more and more people in the coming years. Poor will become Super poor, Middle poor, Upper middle the new middle, Rich richer than ever. And all the drones will continue to go to work, pay taxes and feel so proud that they are contributing to the rich, sorry I mean society.

Enjoy defending a system that ensures your rights are irrelevant, your future is irrelevant and your life is expendable to the "greater good" of the global overlords to be. And that is exactly where we are heading complete and utter rule by Bankers and corporate interests in the top 1%. They already have legal immunity, media control, government influence, Leadership control, They regulate and control laws etc....

Makes you feel sorry for all those that died defending something that is being given away today.

"Its called the American dream. Because you have to be asleep to believe it" GC

a reply to: ketsuko

Religion didn't work any better than socialism by that standard. Show me a theocracy that's done any better.

Ethics can be taught without religion by the way.

Normally there are pretty sound arguments that can be made for doing the right thing without needing men from the sky as a middleman.

a reply to: StallionDuck

Uhh.. That's the Netherlands. Not Sweden.

And Sweden got their wealth from capitalism.

originally posted by: Puppylove
Religion didn't work any better than socialism by that standard. Show me a theocracy that's done any better.

Natural Order.

Ironically, the very thing you decry as terrible, is the one thing that has outlasted any man-made ideology by an almost unimaginable margin.

There is a reason that it has survived where all else has failed.

a reply to: Puppylove

I consider myself part of society too, but I don't need government decreeing that I should share my extra with others who could use it.

However, I was raised to be moral.

I'll make a simple statement and leave it there, if a system of government and it's economy fails to live up to the basic social contract and attempts to fix it consistently result in failure, that system needs to come down and another attempted taking notes of the success and failures of the ones before it.

Our current system has consistently failed to live up to that contract and all signs point to it only getting worse.

Honestly the people that control the worlds resources could easily meet the basic social contract the world over and still live like gods compared to the greatest emperors and kings of our past. They consistently choose not to for reasons of greed and sociopathy.

If they could simply fulfill the basic social contract, we'd still cost them very little and never be even close to bad off enough to consider a revolution, and it wouldn't require all the wars and divisions they use to keep us subdued instead.

a reply to: Puppylove

Woah now! Who said anything about theocracy? You went from 0 to 60 and made one huge assumption there.

Just because I talked about religion doesn't mean I was talking about theocracy. The US has never been and I don't plan for it to start being one, but we have been a far more religious and spiritual nation as a whole than we are now and somehow that was still not a theocracy.