Government can't help, it can only hurt

[Eric the Green]

(01-31-2018, 08:07 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(01-30-2018, 04:11 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: The communist and fascist labels are overused in my opinion.  In their heyday they properly defined authoritarian states with expansionist tendencies.  They often in the case of communism pretended to follow Marx.  Modern US  personalities are often mislabeled.  This doesn't mean they are not flawed.

Extreme partisans often follow simplistic principles that are well outside of observable reality.  My own view favors balance between opposing principles.  If Nebraska sees regulation as always bad, while the blue world view favors regulation to criminalize abusive behaviors, I will seek balance between the two.  

So, yes, I have endorsed many of Nebraskas principles and causes, but disagree in having some faith in representative democracy.

I think the labels are old and outdated. One's dead and the other is clinging to life. I think capitalist and socialist are more accurate labels to use and to go by in today's America. Look at it/ think of it as being this way, I'm a capitalist who is on the capitalist side and you're a capitalist who is on the socialist side. Does it look, do you think that's pretty accurate? I'm not going to be offended if blues call me a capitalist because that's what I am and what I've always been since I was a little kid. The American reds are all American capitalists. The American blues are a mixture of American capitalists and European minded American socialists. Pretty accurate?

American blues can only be called democratic socialists, and that does not even include a majority of blues who voted for the Establishment "corporate" liberal candidate Hillary Clinton. Even the democratic socialists like Bernie admit a strong role for capitalism in his idea of "democratic socialism." Strictly speaking, socialists hold that the state should own and run the means of production, and the only enterprise should be publically owned. American liberals do not stand for this; probably only about 1% of them do. 

"The American reds are all American capitalists. The American blues are a mixture of American capitalists and European minded American socialists. Pretty accurate?"
That does seem close. European-minded socialists also are capitalist to a degree, not strict socialists. Cuba would be closer to being under pure socialism, but Cuba is not democratic, and even pure socialism can also be democratic. Communism, probably not.

"Socialism" in America is a watered-down version, and so for that matter is European socialism, which is more socialist than the American version. Socialism in the USA consists of the idea that the government should run some businesses (e.g. the post office, public schools, maybe energy companies or banks), others should be regulated when necessary, and taxes should support a safety net that protects everyone in case business casts us aside. Capitalists would not necessarily disagree with any of those things; ask Warren Buffet or Bill Gates. 

But far-right capitalists (I would put you roughly in that category, even though it includes more than a third of Americans, along with some rich capitalists like the Koch Brothers and the Mercers, etc.) include people who resent taxes to pay for welfare which they think goes to undeserving, frequently non-white folks. Some of them think these folks are competing with them for jobs, or imposing affirmative action on them. Others of the right wing (such as nebraska, galen, and other libertarian-economics believers, Ayn Rand/Friedman, Mises, Hayek followers, etc.) think that economic relations are properly just contracts between owners and employees, and that government interference in this relationship slows down the economy. Blues counter that unregulated capitalism with no safety net leads to severe inequality, injustice, injury, pollution, and increasing poverty.