Popularity of Socialism Spiking in US; 43 Percent Now Saying It Would Be Good for the Country

The only socialism I want to see in America is socialized medicine. It does not have to be called socialized medicine, just a benefit everyone shares, basic coverage like medicare for all. But to do that, the medical industry has to quit all the unnecessary testing it does and return to sensable medicine. All that technology they tout as cutting edge is expensive, the only cutting edge it has is that it raises rates and cuts our paychecks from growing. Unless, of course, you own or work in a medical technology company making or supplying this crap that is rarely needed.

originally posted by: ketsuko

originally posted by: Blue Shift
Most people don't even know what socialism is. There is no good example of it to point to, so most people just equate it with fascism or communism or some other totalitarian political system.

So explain it to us. Every time I ask someone to explain "real" socialism, no one answers. So my only conclusion is that there is no other example than the authoritarian regimes like Venezuela, the USSR, North Korea, China, etc.

Everyone always thinks socialism is never implemented right... that's always the excuse.

I heard a great saying by a guy being interviewed on Joe Rogan. He said something to the effect:

With my family, I am communist.
With my close friends, I am a socialist.
At my state-level politics I am a democrat.
At higher levels I am a republican.
At a federal-level I'm a libertarian.

a reply to: rickymouse

I don't want that.

It becomes too one-size-fits-all. If you have a condition that won't fit that size, you get screwed.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: rickymouse

I don't want that.

It becomes too one-size-fits-all. If you have a condition that won't fit that size, you get screwed.

I don't feel that insurance should pay for silicone implants in breasts or plastic surgery. There are people paying for other people's cosmetic surgeries and transgender treatments in their premiums these days. They are paying for unnecessary tests others are getting. Think of this....Years ago I would go to the doctor, they would check you over and give you a tetnus shot if they stitched you up. Nobody went to the doctor for the flu or measles years ago around here, most people knew how to treat a cold. Now they want you to go to the doctor if you sneeze or cough, you go into the office with all the sick people and wind up getting sick if you have an unnecessary yearly appointment to renew your meds or just get looked at. Kids got a taxed immune system then go sit in the waiting room and they catch something else, they often send people for a blood test. If the test is to see if a microbe is antibiotic resistant, I can see that being good, but often they just check for stuff like cholesterol and A!C and sticking a needle in the vein of someone sick can introduce extra pathogens into the body.

They used to take X-rays if you complained of stomach issues, the x-rays killed the microbes in the gut and it actually treated people with the X-rays. They don't do that so much anymore, it actually worked too well I guess.

originally posted by: dfnj2015
a reply to: FamCore

Anything to address wealth inequality in this country is a good thing:

Mandatory abortion for poor people who get pregnant? I'd support that 100%.

originally posted by: TonyS
a reply to: face23785

I used to buy supplies for my squadron when I was in the Air Force.

Ha, ha......my Dad was USAFE after WWII and had a friend that was "in supply"! He retired to Hawaii a VERY wealthy man. I can only guess you must have made out quite well!

Not this guy. There is so much oversight now it's almost impossible to get away with stuff like that now. That's another reason why government is not the solution to many problems. You have to have so much bloated bureaucracy to make sure nobody is boning the taxpayer that it makes it cost way more than it should.

ETA: Not to mention I wouldn't do something like that. I actually took my duties seriously. I didn't join to make money.

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: 1947boomer

originally posted by: jjkenobi
47% pay no income tax.
43% are in favor of socialism.

Where's the missing 4%

Do you think the fact that the bottom 50% of the population doesn't pay income tax is in any way related to the fact that the bottom 50% of the population owns only 1% of the nation's wealth?

www.axios.com...

No...

First off, wealth has nothing to do with income. Wealth is what you have... income is what you earn in any given year.

You can be a multi-millionaire in terms of wealth and have little to no income. On the flip side, you can have a lot of income and still be broke because of high debts.

Nobody ever said progressives knew anything about economics.

a reply to: rickymouse

Insurance shouldn't unless you pay for a package that does or unless you have some kind of horrific disfiguring accident or a cancer diagnosis that necessitates reconstructive surgery.

Obamacare was when that changed because people argued it was necessary.

We already have a somewhat quasi socialist/capitalist economy here(corporate and social welfare, city and state owned energy, govt funded clinics and healthcare etc.). It never was and never will be a pure capitalist country (and nothing like that can ever exist actually based off the nature of it.)

Pure socialism, like pure capitalism isn't really evil, but neither will ever happen. They're too altruistic and rely on the acceptance of the individual, ALL individuals. That'll never happen no matter the ideology.

And so now you see the reverse psychology that is in play with Trump forcing the left way farther left while appearing to not want to. Anyone who is not very right wing is only going to move left when there's a guy like Trump in office. So if you have people who were only slightly to the right before, those people are going to move far enough left to give more go power to whomever the left puts forth in the future. If that ends up being a socialist (no matter how mild) that is what will happen.

Reverse psychology. Make one thing more appetizing by showing something way worse.

a reply to: Edumakated
It is not true that "wealth has nothing to do with income". The two are positively correlated, according to a recent article in WorkInProgress based on government data supplied by the Federa lReserve:

www.wipsociology.org...

It is true that you can be a multimillionaire like Donald Trump and claim no income (or even losses) for years at a time or have an income of tens of millions per year like an NFL player and blow it all on fast cars and faster women and have nothing left at the end of your career. But those are outliers in the statistics. If you subtract out the top 1% of high wealth individuals and high income individuals, you end up with a correlation coefficient between median income and median wealth of .61 (a medium to strong correlation). I would guess the correlation gets stronger as you go further down the scale in Both wealth and income. So if you have low net wealth you are very likely to also have low income, and vice versa.

a reply to: FamCore

Where is socialism working well, with the majority of citizens happy?

originally posted by: 1947boomer
a reply to: Edumakated
It is not true that "wealth has nothing to do with income". The two are positively correlated, according to a recent article in WorkInProgress based on government data supplied by the Federa lReserve:

www.wipsociology.org...

It is true that you can be a multimillionaire like Donald Trump and claim no income (or even losses) for years at a time or have an income of tens of millions per year like an NFL player and blow it all on fast cars and faster women and have nothing left at the end of your career. But those are outliers in the statistics. If you subtract out the top 1% of high wealth individuals and high income individuals, you end up with a correlation coefficient between median income and median wealth of .61 (a medium to strong correlation). I would guess the correlation gets stronger as you go further down the scale in Both wealth and income. So if you have low net wealth you are very likely to also have low income, and vice versa.

1) your guess is irrelevant

2) correlation does not equal causation

Most people have little wealth because they waste money on crap they don't need. Even "rich" NFL players. Your choices have a bigger impact on your wealth than your income does.

originally posted by: Freeborn
a reply to: face23785

These kids need to be taught financial responsibility starting in high school,....

Just like the students with wealthy parents who clear their debt with no obligation whatsoever to re-pay it?
Exactly how are they being taught 'financial responsibility'?

As with most things in this world it isn't so clear cut and black and white.

Financial responsibility, yeah right we have an American president that's been bankrupt how many times, seems the only financial responsibility being taught these days is if you mess up, you write it off and start again.

originally posted by: dfnj2015
a reply to: FamCore

Anything to address wealth inequality in this country is a good thing:

How strong can the country be if there are not enough good paying jobs and everyone is in so much in debt??????????

Prevent illegal immigration and visa overstays, watch these companies panic for workers and start enticing them with higher pay. Oh, and stop telling people that college is the only choice for a decent career. Some professors don't deserve their jobs.

a reply to: hopenotfeariswhatweneed

Once upon a time, two very wise people taught me that the only person whose actions you can control are your own.

Why sneer about someone else and what they do to use it as an excuse for your own failings? Just because Citizen X over there is apparently horrible at his or her finances is no excuse for you to be likewise awful, and it certainly is no excuse for you to demand someone else come in and control everyone's finances just because you don't want to take proper control of your own life.

originally posted by: hopenotfeariswhatweneed

originally posted by: Freeborn
a reply to: face23785

These kids need to be taught financial responsibility starting in high school,....

Just like the students with wealthy parents who clear their debt with no obligation whatsoever to re-pay it?
Exactly how are they being taught 'financial responsibility'?

As with most things in this world it isn't so clear cut and black and white.

Financial responsibility, yeah right we have an American president that's been bankrupt how many times, seems the only financial responsibility being taught these days is if you mess up, you write it off and start again.

He's been bankrupt precisely 0 times. He's used the bankruptcy laws in the real estate business several times, which anyone with even a passing familiarity with real estate knows is not always a bad thing.

3 years later and some of you still think this "bankruptcy" thing is a point? I couldn't stay this uninformed if I tried.

The "he lost a bunch of money" story the NYT ran last month is actually accurate, I would use that if you're gonna attack his financial savvy.

a reply to: face23785

The "he lost a bunch of money" story the NYT ran last month is actually accurate, I would use that if you're gonna attack his financial savvy.

Which he wrote about in great detail in "The Art of the Comeback" in 1997.

NY Times thinks they had a real story even though Trump told that story himself 21 years ago.

originally posted by: face23785

originally posted by: 1947boomer
a reply to: Edumakated
It is not true that "wealth has nothing to do with income". The two are positively correlated, according to a recent article in WorkInProgress based on government data supplied by the Federa lReserve:

www.wipsociology.org...

It is true that you can be a multimillionaire like Donald Trump and claim no income (or even losses) for years at a time or have an income of tens of millions per year like an NFL player and blow it all on fast cars and faster women and have nothing left at the end of your career. But those are outliers in the statistics. If you subtract out the top 1% of high wealth individuals and high income individuals, you end up with a correlation coefficient between median income and median wealth of .61 (a medium to strong correlation). I would guess the correlation gets stronger as you go further down the scale in Both wealth and income. So if you have low net wealth you are very likely to also have low income, and vice versa.

1) your guess is irrelevant

2) correlation does not equal causation

Most people have little wealth because they waste money on crap they don't need. Even "rich" NFL players. Your choices have a bigger impact on your wealth than your income does.

OK, you don't like my guesses? Here's a study by the OEDC giving the correlation between income and wealth in the US for 2013, by quintile, showing exactly what I guessed. People in the lowest quintile of income had the highest correlation with the lowest quintile of wealth; people in the second quintile of income had the highest correlation with people in the second quintile of wealth, and so on. The lower you are on the scale of either wealth or income, the more likely it is that you will be low on the other scale.

iariw.org...

At no time did I ever say that correlation implies causation. But correlation does not imply the absence of causation, either. I simply point out that the empirical evidence is that there is a strong correlation between the two.

Here is another study by Deutsche Bank of wealth and income distribution in the US for 2013. Page 30 shows that the fraction of income that is spent on luxuries instead of necessities is highest in the top quintile of the population and declines monotonically to the lowest quintile. The top earners spend about twice as much of their income on luxuries as they do on necessities. For the lowest earners, that ratio is reversed. Low income people buy proportionately less "crap that they don't need" than do high income people (like NFL players).

Yes, life choices make a difference in your wealth on a relative scale, but they don't make a BIGGER absolute difference than income. Let's say I make 32K$ per year at a 15 dollar-per-hour minimum wage job and I manage to not spend 10%, while the guy working next to me earning the same wages spends 100% of his income. In that case, I will have about $3200 per year to save and invest and if I don't have any bad luck, I might end up when I retire with a hundred K$ more than the guy next to me. But if I earn 75$ per hour and save/invest 10% per year until I retire, I will probably end up worth at least a couple million.

There just isn't enough economic opportunity available at the lower end of the income/wealth distribution these days, and that's choking off capitalism. There isn't a high enough fraction of the population with enough wealth/income to buy the stuff that our capitalist system is capable of turning out. That's the reason that thinking people want to redistribute wealth away from the top and toward the bottom. It's to save capitalism, not because they love socialism.

iariw.org...

a reply to: 1947boomer

The problem is that you have to factor in income mobility. The vast majority of the people that are in the lower quintile of income earners don't stay there. At one point in my life, I made $35k and had a pocket full of lint. However, some years I've made several hundred thousand. Same with my wife.

These quintiles are not set in stone. The INDIVIDUALS within the income brackets move into different brackets.

On the other hand, the vast majority of the people that make it to the top 1% don't stay there either.

Here is Thomas Sowell explaining...