Just chuckle with me when I notice that PK and all-around PITA TX Senator Ted Cruz called President Obama an "unmitigated socialist".
Oh, Ted, you slay me with this 1950's flavored performance art you do. Please do tell me about the industries our Red Diaper Dandy three-pointered into nationalization. None? Look at that. None. And it seems like Obamacare is at any rate more of a free market private company thingamajig than the Medicare that Cruz thinks is now totally acceptable.
Could it just be because President Obama went to Harvard? Because Cruz totally believes there were Communists at Harvard.
Cruz also went to Harvard--and so did Tom Cotton! I'm feeling menaced by Reds, you guys. I think I'll read the business pages of the newspaper until I feel better. Because we weirdly are still not in a socialist workers paradise. But maybe people with money are doing okay? Could the senator from the Texas branch of Goldman Sachs cool his jets, already?
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Hi Vixen, I'm glad you're back. When I read your latest poem, I began to get a little concerned.
Ted. Well, I won't be making up my mind about a candidate for another year. A bunch of them have yet to announce.
Here's the problem.
If you go too far to the left, you get totalitarianism. If you go too far to the right, you get anarchy. Neither of which is desirable, obviously. I absolutely disfavor socialism. I also am not in favor of unbridled robber baron capitalism.
Both the government and unqualified capitalism can be a gigantic, crushing wheel that destroys people like an impersonal juggernaut.
We do not have a capitalist or socialist economy. We have what economists call a mixed economy, i.e., a lot of free enterprise and a lot of socialism. We have social security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare payments, unemployment, etc., through many, many government programs. A good while back the American Taxpayers Union did a study and determined that if you got rid of all the layers of expensive management in the welfare department and simply had a bunch of people mailing out checks, every welfare recipient would have received over $60,000 a year. The same thing happens in private charities when the recipient will get a few cents out of every dollar collected. Meanwhile the people who administer the charity receive huge compensation. Both government charities and private charities are often rackets in their own ways.
I think that it is possible to make an argument for the idea that President Obama pushes for more socialism, and the question is always how much is too much?
I am a political conservative given the choices that we have, but that doesn't mean I'm a libertarian. We believe that it is necessary that an adequate safety net be established to assist those who need it. However, after we have put that in place we feel that our moral responsibility has been discharged. This calls for a measure of socialism, but also has limitations on socialism.
An argument for more socialism could be that the economy has been so devastated by flaws from both parties that we now have a shrinking job market and even the ambitious can find it impossible to get situated. I think I heard some statistic that suggested that something like a third of college grads could not find employment. And this is after universities have jacked up tuition fees to staggering amounts. So no job and huge debt through no fault of your own is a good argument for more socialism. It is useless to be pointing fingers. Both parties have been in this game for years. Illegal immigration is encouraged, and this destroys job possibilities for many Americans, it lowers wages, and disrupts the labor markets. Huge numbers of illegal immigrants require government assistance and this has placed staggering additions to our already over-burdened social safety net. Finally, it invites agents of the powerful drug cartels to take up residence in the US to ply their trade.
As always, it's a matter of inadequate men and women governing through inadequate political systems.
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