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25% Of Americans Prefer Socialism Over Capitalism
While Americans are preached that "free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity," it appears that not everyone is buying it. Whether it is the failure of prosperity to trickle down (and the inequality that has been created) or just the herd-like need to be told what to do (and never take risks), Pew Research finds a stunning 25% of Americans do not believe people are better off in a free market system - implicitly preferring centrally-planned lives. Ironically, belief in the free market tends to be highest in developing countries while in Japan and Spain, a majority prefer to be managed than free.
Belief in the free market tends to be highest in developing countries (median of 71%). Nearly two-thirds or more in all nine of the developing economies surveyed agree that most people benefit from capitalism, including 80% of Bangladeshis, 75% of Ghanaians and 74% of Kenyans.
Advanced economies are somewhat more divided over the free market. At least seven-in-ten in South Korea, Germany and the U.S. say most people are better off under capitalism, but fewer than half in Greece, Japan and Spain agree.
There has been moderate change in support for the free market between 2007 and 2014 among the countries surveyed in both years. The Spanish (-22 percentage points) and Italians (-16) stand out for their declining belief in capitalism over the course of the global recession.
It appears it is time to change America's subtitle to "the land of the centrally-planned."
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Perhaps - once again - Monty Python summed it up perfectly in Life of Brian...
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90% of Americans have no clue what either term really means
90% of Americans have no clue, period.
Gruber is that you ??
+ a million, seasmoke!
We don't have free market capitalism. We have crony capitalism. The only thing they have in common is the word capitalism.
Dead on. During Bush's last 2 years and Obama's first 6 years, according to Investopia, we had a mixed capitalistic/socialistic system. From its Privatizing Profits And Socializing Losses article:
A phrase describing how businesses and individuals can successfully benefit from any and all profits related to their line of business, but avoid losses by having those losses paid for by society... The biggest example of privatizing losses and socializing losses came during the TARP bailouts of 2008-2009 in which the United States government bailed out numerous banks, insurers and auto manufacturers after they had sustained huge losses in their business dealings, in some cases through unacceptable risk tasking and lack of due diligence.
Without Creative Destruction (ie, Creative destruction describes the "process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one."), the capitalistic free market can't work. If the free market isn't working, we can't have capitalism.
The useful idiots who prefer socialism over capitalism are fucking pukes. They don't understand that any supposed failures of capitalism were caused by socialists (eg, Bush and Obama; Democrats and Republicans) preventing capitalism from working its magic.
The problem is actually the size of government.
And the fact that they are all dictatorial because you can't opt out.
The debate between "government is too big" and "wall street owns the world" has been going on too long. As in so many apparent disagreements, this one neglects the fundamental agreement at its core: i.e. they are both right.
Government is the tool by which this abortion of a system is possible, yes. But even the most cursory of examinations shows that the vast majority of any politician's energy is spent begging for financial support to continue his future political career. And where does he go for that? Private money.
All of which is to say that the people running Wall Street and its London, Berlin, Tokyo, Beijing equivalents... and the people running the DC, London, Berlin, Tokyo, Beijing political establishments are fundamentally the same people, and at their core, they desire the same things. And those things have nothing to do with >90% of what benefits the general population.
The problem is the size of government and the problem is the fatcat bankers. Let's put that debate to bed. You're both right. Socialism is definitely not the answer, as it is only a further evolution down this same path of unifying state and economy into one hellish demon that tyrannizes over the majority of humanity in the most inhuman ways.
The more decentralized power is, both economic and political, the more freedom will return.
The same 25% that support Obola. Tell us something we DON'T know.
How the FUCK
Would a fucking American
Know what FREE MARKET CAPITALISM looks like?
Author Pleez.
This is like saying your barnyard pigs prefer old rotten potatoes to creme brule...
Your pigs have never had/seen/smelled/known creme brule.
Only they don't know it.
Articulate, intelligent comment, SofaPapa.
People support protected economies that principally rely on redistribution when their perception is that opportunity of personal success is gone. Our government, especially the left, has been preaching for years that hard work was a chumps game while doing everything possible to make sure that was true. Now those who believe in free market capitalism are a dying breed and truly are the chumps. Last in line for government subsidies goes to bed hungry. What was always fiction has become the "new" reality which is a delusion with dire consequences, but like every other predictor of doom, we likely won't survive long enough to say I told you so.
It's cronyism in private and public sector.
Ban the isms!
"Gruber is that you ??"
Well, I got the law passed, didn't I, just as Pelosi said we needed to, else she and her fellow clownsmen wouldn't have known what was in it.
Just doin' what I can, in other words, to serve the people at their expense.
Oh, and this is how I played the CBO:
http://static.ddmcdn.com/gif/violin-old-new-670.jpg
Snl needs to bring back the Mcgruber skit
Gruber was right, and honest. Did anyone relaly believe that the gov't wasn't taking advanatge of the sheer idiocy of Americans?
Ya well I have a clue! I'm sick of "ism"s! As if thses are our only two options.
Only 25% ? That would those getting handouts I expect.
Along with most government and college employees
Don't at least 33% believe in UFOs and angels? And I'll bet at least 25% believe that Islam is a religion of peace.
The term "better off" is the ambiguity in the survey question.
Better off than being in a Centrally Controlled system?
Just how can they know if that is the case since the system has been "centrally controlled" for at least the last 55 years? Many have not once ever experienced a Free Market.
Swap Meets and Garage Sales are the last bastion of Free Markets in the USSA. And even those are becoming more subject to Government controls.
Would have been alot higher except they dont understand that Progressivism = Socialism
That is probably very true. As I understand it, the United States currently ranks below 20th, and in some cases 30th, on international comparisons of school quality.
Despite spending the most money per student of any country
At least US kindergartners know how to safely fist and rim.
/
Sex-ed for preschoolers, cuz "they start that early."
What a fucking pedophile!!!
Seriously how can those bent thoughts even go through what little of a mind that you have, much more than that to write them?
See the forward slash tom?
That denotes sarcasm.
denote [ di?n?t ] verb third person present: denotesMore
oh, if only it was just a case of an individual sicko, but alas, he is dead on with where the masters of social engineering are going...............
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2013/02/28/chicago-passes-sex-ed-for-...
http://liveactionnews.org/proposed-siecus-sex-education-curriculum-for-g...
http://www.fox5vegas.com/story/26609826/school-district-considering-big-...
revised, sorry, anal sex isn't until 5th grade, my bad
http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Parents-Shocked-by-Material-Mistake...
couldn't be more right.
If you wear a cap of any sort, you're a capitalist. If you use social media, you're a socialist.
What if I'm wearing a cap while using social media?
Are we talking about the "socialism" of countries like Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark? Or are we talking about the "socialism" of countries like North Korea and the former Soviet Union? Or are we talking about the "socialism" of countries like China?
Without context or definition the word itself becomes a miasmic boogeyman that can be used to represent anything you want, good or bad. Myself, I detest the socialism of North Korea, but I'm thinking that all things considered we might be able to learn something from the socialism of countries like Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark. Last I saw, I didn't see those countries having the sorts of problems with rampant, runaway, instutionalized corruption, a "total surveillance state," wholesale incarceration, and endless wars that some grand champions of the glorious "free market" currently have.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go wave my flag and eat some "freedom fries."
95%+ of the American electorate could not adequately define either of those two concepts.
Besides...Free Shit YO!
That's the problem with socialism. Why work hard when someone else who works half as hard gets the same outcome
You do? There's no incentive to work, only to take. And somehow, there is still a class of rich people at the top controlling everyone anyway.
"There's no incentive to work"
What about the feeling of accomplishment when you do something well, even so small a work as fixing a leaky pipe, restroring an old car or repairing a computer than others would throw away, or building a room on your own dwelling? Theoretically, no comsumer or monetary value to these acts, but what price true self-esteem? Not to mention the incredible feeling of raising your offspring to understand and function in the world with real skills or caring for an aging parent rather than adjuring responsility and putting them in a nursing home? These are all money losing activities, yet priceless!
Well, there's the problems right there. The feeling of accomplishment vs the knowing that you're being absolutely screwed. Even if you're dumb enough to go with the former, there's plenty out there that will have no wish to follow your example.
Raising offspring? I did the numbers. Can't afford it. Battling to keep myself alive, let alone anyone else. Needless to say, I have not taken govt subsidies into account in my calculations. I might be surprised. But then I'd be a socialist, wouldn't I? On the downside some of my taxes go towards paying for other people's brats while I can't afford to have any of my own. On the upside those brats will have to do all their own work, because I haven't got any that they can enslave.
What free-market capitalism?
And socialism appears to impose austerity at the behest of banks.
The old "-isms" are dead, but they serve as useful distractions in this bankster paradise.
A $100k in student loan debt and a degree in "Basket Weaving" after being indoctrinated by every "blood sucking leech" could drive a person to the FSA.
~Hypothetically speaking~ Don't want to offend anyone<>
Or into a government job where they get their student loan forgiven (in 20 years or so) by the same people who told them early in life it was totally cool to put the debt schackles on in the first place.
Who really gives a shit what people think when you got 'em by the balls?
Ya into a government job that produces absolutely nothing. The vast majority of government jobs are nothing more than turd counters who get a paycheck. But hey, they buy shit too.
The last thing the government wants is people doing something productive. If you do something productive there's a possibility you could slip free of their shackles. They can't have that happen. So they make sure the job is nothing but a government works program and your skill set is never of value beyond the daily bowl of gruel they give you.
The primary government occupation is to hold as much power as possible while minimizing any responsibility or accountability. Obama epitomizes this trait.
Dupe
Thank You, No Debt... Fantastic comment.
Those same people will be living off of mega pensions, and paying $100.00 for a dozen eggs.
like the photos of the zimbabweans..."starving billionaires"
When you've got someone by the balls, their minds will likely follow along without protest.
You've just wasted 20 years of your life, however. How should we price that loss of time? Its a quarter of a life span. All real life values are priced in time, not $.
The majority are a compassionate liberals, not just 25%.....that is, until it comes to THEIR wallets.
Refer to the recent demand of the young, unions, women, liberals, etc. for obamacare.
And subsequent non-participation when they got the bill.
It takes a village....
It takes government indoctrination to raise so many village idiots
Maybe just a semantic quibble, but there is absolutely nothing compassionate about modern liberalism. Is is the most base, dishonest, brutal belief system. There is nothing more gutless than being a liberal in the modern sense. All you have to do is claim to care about some victim class (perceived or real) and VOILA! You are part of the compassionate liberal system. You don't have to actually devote your personal wealth or time to actually helping said victim class, it is well enough that you use your "concern" to demagogue others.
Modern American liberalism is masterbatory self-love. The wolves love its vestiges.
yeah, I'm surprised that the % isn't much higher.
Give it time. Capitalism will be hated, reviled and used as a strawman in support of government control for decades after anything vaguely resembling capitalism is dead and gone.
Did Wall Street actually ask for the bailouts or was the fact that Wall Street exists the threat that demanded the 750 billion?
It was ex Goldman Sachs executives in government providing bailouts for Goldman Sachs.
Sorry, I'm plugging the same two books again. You'd think I'd never read anything else. Para-phrasing as my memory is a little rusty:
"... when he couldn't do things because they were against the law, he lobbied the govt and got the laws changed ..." - Liars Poker by Michael Lewis
"how does a $14k per year strawberry picker get a loan to buy a $750k house?" - The Big Short (Inside The Doomsday Machine) - same author.
No my name is not Michael. Try at the library. But both those stories pre-date the bailouts. That's where armageddon addahere's comment above comes in and it is spot on.
I thought we were already there. I know a fair many pretty "smart" people that are actually useful in their learned capacities that are completely retarded about the world situation.
Just wait till Liewatha, aka Fauxcahauntus launcher her 2016 campaign!
@Infinity,
The number is clearly higher. FAR HIGHER.
A fucker like the current messiah could never have been elected otherwise.
And that goes for any liberal (repub or dem) that occupies any political position, anywhere, anyplace.
I would guess we are approx. 60-65% socialist, at least nominally.
But as I said earlier.....when the $$ bill comes due for the "compassion" liberals demand (and who call everyone who disagrees with them "selfish, homophobe, sexist or racist").....THEIR wallets shrink like testicles in an ice bath.
In reality, no one is a true socialist. Everyone wants back more than they give.
Everyone's a capitalist until they become weak or tired.
Or a liberal who wants a handout....
All those who died and suffered in Vietnam and Korea, your efforts were not in vain.
Capitalism or crony capitalism. Not sure most Americans have actually experienced capitalism lately. Mostly we've just seen socialism for the rich and screw yourself for the less than rich.
Our system of statism/fascism resembles neither capitalism or socialism. My fellow Americans need to pull their collective heads out of their collective ass.
It very much resembles socialism, at least one of the stages any socialist system is hidebound to go through.
Under true socialism, the free-loaders get free stuff. In our system, sometimes you have to pay it back.
O-phones are probably socialist. (I don't know the finer details).
A lot of housing "subsidies" come in the form of loans that have to be paid back - and don't forget the interest.
Housing "grants" do nothing other than push up the price of housing - the true benefactors are the house sellers and the banksters.
Some "affordable" housing schemes involve govt taking part ownership of the house - theft by stealth.
A lot of ideas promoted as "socialist" simply funnel money, ownership and control to govt and banksters. The so-called free-loader thinks he's getting something for nothing, but the paperwork reveal that he is screwed. His stupidity is tolerated by TPTB because
1. His job is to push higher prices and debt loads onto the rest of the population.
2. They can pull the rug out from under him whenever they like.
The real trickle down is government handouts. Not much trickles down from the top.
It's all in the definitions, which have been perverted and manipulated to the extent that the current generations have not a clue what the terms and conditions of the free markets should even be. It sure as Hell isn't taught in school anymore. It is no surprise that Socialism resonates with the ever expanding entitlement crowd, since that is the shortest path from A to B with the least amount of personal responsibilty, work, and time investment. Hard work, saving, honor, commitment, etc are for the losers who pull the wagon.....
Apparently the Vietnam War did bring freedom to that country, though not in the way its supporters envisioned.
Coercion bad freedom good, the end
Are you sure only 25%? seems at least 50% vote for socialism every 2 years.
Economic freedom, who'd a thunk it?
Looks like on the two countries where they actually see wealthy people flaunt wealth in their faces without guilt (India and China) they know that capitalism is better. It's only like 30-40% of the world's population lives there. And both have seen an alternative system to market capitalism in their recent histories. Call it 50 years.
And what's median of? Median country response? Let's try weighting that against population and see what it is. Oh. Much more in favor of market capitalism.
um, they preach capitalism in America, where is this America? All I hear is "You didn't build that"
Yeah, shame no-one heard / remembers, "God bless. Keep a big hunk of it" or the rest of that speech:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-P-CoSNYaI
But then again, if you only heard the Obama version or the Hillary version then I understand your confusion. It seriously deteriorates with every re-telling.
Truly... a Peoples' Republic.
Always have.
Always will.
If voting wasn't watered down by fraud and propaganda, Amerika wouldn't vote Fascism every cycle.
No one alive today knows what an actual free market looks like.
Orwell was a raging optimist.
I'm guessing about 80% of that 25% were told to suppport socialism by the richest 1 or 2%. Anyone wanna bet?
Nope, no betting here, pretty obvious from the conversations I've had with iSheeple/I mean people.
the 25% that supports socialism is surely the entitled federal employees. and the university faculty. the entire obama administration.
taking religious freedom in the name of tolerance and diversity. taking 2nd amendment rights in the name of tolerance and diversity. causing a constitutional crisis and civil war in the name of tolerance and diversity.
i will tolerate their diversity no moar!
amnestry = civil war
the participation rate in the survey is
interesting too.
This would help explain why the police state took over so quickly without much resistance
And in places where freedom was founded like Boston they actually celebrated the takeover and loss of their rights
BREAKING NEWS: The body of the Status of Liberty was found raped, murdered and dumped into the East River last night. Nobody has claimed the body and so it will receive the customary paupers burial. The ashes will be spread under a tree in a nearby forest at the request of Iron Eyes Cody
The lone Native America was seen crying with one tear in one eye
Now back to your regularly schedule programming
Crony capitalism..it's all I see. It's easy to make money when you can lobby gov't for favorable tax law and regulations. It's easy too when you can build cartels and monopolies to corner and rape your custormers. After the US financial system was turned into Dodge City where "anything goes," that sort of discouraged me from investing. When 10k's are a sheet of lies, when the SEC has it's balls cut off and when the likes of Madoff are allowed to run free..well, it doesn't embolden me to trust this brand of capitalism.
Surrre...the market will "self correct" and catch the likes of Madoff. That sure worked great the last time. The market/Maddof kept chugging along till government caught his ass. And they wonder why retail stays on the sidelines.
Did not Maddof go to prison?
Free Jeff Corzine!
Ask a socialist what America’s governing system should be and the reply will be centralized planning, a reply brought to us by the incredibly biased socialist organization, Pew Research.
This so-called polling company has lately become nothing but a loudspeaker for a socialist one-world state.
So much of America’s socialism derives from two sources: 1) the corruption of leaders and political entities to serve a central government and 2) the importation, legal and illegal, of masses of welfare and Third World opportunists whose primary goal is to be served by a socialist state, i.e., by wealth transfer.
The Pew Charitable Trusts fund the Pew Research Center, the third-largest think tank in Washington, D.C., after the Brookings Institution and the Center for American Progress.
Says Scott Walker in Pew and the Gang Ride Again:
“Pew is indefatigable in its efforts to shape – even circumscribe – Americans’ political speech…today Pew leads the way in developing and funding proposals to re-educate citizens and voters to understand the benefits of democracy guided by elites. Pew is most famous for its role in the manipulative crusade that a few big funders carried out to pass the McCain-Feingold ‘campaign finance reform’ law. That Act still limits citizens’ and private groups’ speech before elections, even though the Supreme Court ruled part of the law unconstitutional.
“But McCain-Feingold is only one of the ways Pew and its gang of like-minded left-of-center funders struggle to massage – some would say, strangle– the speech of ordinary Americans...."
Says Walker: "The Pew Charitable Trusts and a small group of left-of-center grant makers have launched repeated crusades to control Americans’ speech, whether it’s expressed in political campaigns, newspapers, or television and radio. Their latest effort aims to bring speech over the Internet to heel. But even some left-wingers suspect the goal is not to help the average citizen but to defend elite gatekeepers’ control over the nation’s conversations.”
Discoverthenetworks.org reports:
"The Pew Global Attitudes Project is chaired by Madeleine Albright, who served as U.S. Secretary of State in the Clinton administration.
“PCT (Pew Charitable Trusts) supports a host of organizations that are passionately anti-corporate and anti-capitalist, while it simultaneously holds many millions of dollars worth of investments in major corporations. For instance, while PCT invests in Exxon-Mobil, it grants money to the EarthJustice Legal Defense Fund, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Environmental Working Group, Friends of the Earth, Global Exchange, Greenpeace, the Izaak Walton League of America, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Nature Conservancy, Public Citizen, the Rainforest Action Network, the Rainforest Alliance, the Ruckus Society, the Sierra Club, Trust for Public Land, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, the Wilderness Society, the World Resources Institute, the World Wildlife Fund, and a host of other environmentalist groups that view Exxon-Mobifl as an ecological menace.
To view a list of additional noteworthy grantees of the Pew Charitable Trusts, click here.
PCT is the largest funding source for the Tides Center, having given the latter nearly $109 million between 1990 and 2002. Other PCT grantees include: the Brennan Center for Justice; the Brookings Institution; the Council on Foundations; Environmental Media Services; the Institute for Policy Studies; National Public Radio; Physicians for Social Responsibility; Planned Parenthood; the Union of Concerned Scientists; the Urban Institute; and Zero Population Growth.
To view a list of additional noteworthy grantees of the Pew Charitable Trusts, click here…
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/funderprofile.asp?fndid=521
It seems typical for people who use the word "socialism" on Zero Hedge to do so in ways which appear to have nothing to do with the dictionary definition of that word. Similarly, people continue to use the word "capitalism" as if the idealized dictionary definition of that word corresponded to anything in the real world, which still justified using that word, or even that word modified by any adjectives.
The "money" made out of nothing to "pay" for warfare is orders of magnitude greater than the money made out of nothing to pay for welfare. Different people tend to prefer to bitch about one aspect or the other, while both are connected. BOTH ARE PRIMARILY BASED ON PRIVATELY CONTROLLED BANKS LEGALLY CREATING THE PUBLIC "MONEY" SUPPLY OUT OF NOTHING AS DEBTS.
There is only one reality, and that is the reality of organized crime, repeating itself fractally on different scales. Some of those organized criminals invent various "isms" which are bullshit to conceal what they are really doing, with language that supports professional liars and immaculate hypocrites to be able to indulge in misrepresenting what they are doing. There are no good labels or commonly understood language to describe real political processes, due to the degree to which the best organized gangs of criminals dominated society, so that their bullshit social stories became dominant.
THE LEGAL ABILITY OF PRIVATE BANKS TO MAKE THE PUBLIC "MONEY" SUPPLY OUT OF NOTHING AS DEBTS HAS MADE THAT FORM OF "MONEY" BECOME ANTI-CAPITAL, ANALOGOUS TO ANTI-MATTER, WHICH HAS ANNIHILATED "CAPITALISM" & "FREE MARKETS."
Meanwhile, for generation after generation, the majority of Americans have learned how to adapt to become as personally successful as they can be as individuals, despite the political system that they were living in becoming runaway systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence. NONE OF THE "ISMS" MAKE MUCH SENSE, OTHER THAN AS BULLSHIT PARROTED BY BRAINWASHED POLITICAL IDIOTS, OR THOSE WHO WANT TO CONTINUE TO BAMBOOZLE THOSE IDIOTS.
For all practical purposes, it is impossible to resolve the basic political problem that civilization is controlled by lies backed by violence, which more successfully does that the more that it lies about doing that, and therefore, those who are most socially successful become the best of those liars. Theories of economics are almost infinite tunnels of deceits, where the lies are different at every level.
IN THAT CONTEXT, RATIONAL PUBLIC DEBATES ABOUT THE RELATIVE MERITS OF SOCIALISM VERSUS CAPITALISM ARE IMPOSSIBLE. Public opinion polls are profoundly misleading, because they are merely samples of the attitudes of the masses of mainstream morons, who have been misled their whole lives by their schooling and mass media. Since the social realities are that governments are the biggest forms of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals, who can share the benefits from their systems with some, while punishing others, and have done so for generation after generation, the majority of people have adapted to that situation in the ways that they have, which rendered public opinion polls to become THE RIDICULOUS STACKED ON TOP OF THE ABSURD.
There are no merits in socialism. That's the base line. Capitalism has proved to work for ages, because it's about free trade (or at least less hampered trade). Socialism is just about one thing, opression.
You could not possibly be more wrong...wrong about your definitions..wrong about the 'benefits' of current economic practices. Your view of socialism is as infantile as is your view of capitalism, and neither of those views hass any reference point to the real world. But don't be worried - you are certainly not alone.
Cluelessness does not get into wars way. It the exact opposite cluelessness leads to war. You obviously have not read why socialism NEVER EVER can work. You just believe with enough intelligent leaders, everythin would be fine. I just hope you will earn first and foremost what you seem to like.
Americans have been told that they live under "free market capitalism", and, they know it's not working for them.
The fact that they they live in a centrally planned plutocratic cryto-oligrachy is lost in the fog of distractions.
So yes, the grass doesn't look so green here; maybe it's better somewhere else. The somewhere else is where they already are.
If you've got to the point where five bucks is a lot of money because you don't happen to have it, socialism probably looks pretty good.
Free shit and no bootstraps needed.
And I'm supposed to have some "faith" in declining American mental ability? At least some people have "got it right"...
Yea...the "free market" fairly tale freaks will always say we have capitalism while THEY'RE doing well. The fact is we have worse than crony capitalism...we have RIGHT-WING central planning or "Republican capitalism" or "socialism for the rich". Take your pick. When six banks control 65% of all American assets and six media conglomerates control 95% of all media..that's central planning...just the way Reagan set in motion when he turned over this once great democracy to the corporate heads.
When the twenty largest corporations in Italy installed Mussolini to create the first "corporate state" they had to "march on Rome" to remove the sitting head of state. They had no idea all they had to do was create a big lie that everyone is living in a "free market" while one percent control the entire economy by paying off every CONSERVATIVE legislator.
The Europeans lived through corporate fascism in Italy and Germany and now they got wise. They have real social-capitalism that invests in national healthcare, national education and national transportation that helps their business transport goods at TWENTY percent less than anywhere else. In other words, they invest in their CITIZENS and not the YACHTS AND MANSIONS of the PIGS of society.
Sure, Europe is in recession, thanks to Wall Street's selling of trillions in bogus Swaps...but their debt is half of ours and if anyone thinks the USA will compete going forward with any social-capitalist society with a healthier, more educated and mobile workforce...they are bigger fools than the idiot cult followers of Ayn Rand.
Notice that only in the socialists view of socialism does noone think differently who is still alive.
This poll tells us nothing but how well or poorly global propaganda works.
Those hollowed up words were turned, by no so free global propaganda machine, into meaningless newspeak.
Adam Smith saw clearly that theoretical economic system, he described in his book, did not exist in England nor anywhere else at that time. Instead, mercantile, state sponsored/connected oligarchy rained supreme. From there state intervention only got worse.
Similarly, Rosa Luxembourg, theoretician of socialism, some 150 years later complained that what Lenin and his revolutionary social-democrats wanted to established was not a socialism at all. It must have been something to it because, her friend, also theoretician of socialism, Karl Liebknecht was shut dead and she was denounced and arrested by her political friends.
So it looks like people really do not know what socialism or capitalism is since none of them were ever implemented within societies. So entire poll is completely irrelevant check, on effectiveness of laundry detergent in the process of global brainwashing.
Come to think about it, Lenin ideas were exactly up the alley of our central bank reds, meaning transition from private tyranny delegated by the state to strait fusion of crooks and oligarch into fabric of the state epitomized by abstract concept of supreme leader e.g. Soviet Union.
What was surprise that it turned out that historically highest growth rates were achieved by these nameless but uncannily similar economic systems in which more tyranny always translated into more growth. Even during WWII, without free trade rules but economic blockades instead, world trade flourished and growth continued despite food, fuel rationing and severe limits of civil/human rights, individual economic activity, including coercion of financial and commodity markets. And it applied to US as well to Soviets.
After war if there was a race between east and west it was the race to the same end. More fusion between capital and the state. And sadly, we have to admit that Soviets were ahead of us more then 30 years. It was in early seventies of last century that central bank of USSR began unprecedented bailout of inefficient soviet industry, by means of what we would have called ZIR corporate bond buying spree under name of specific economic development decrees.
It turned out that soviet military- industrial complex, which wasted hundreds of billions of rubles on fantastic machines of doom (reminder: 1 dollar = 0.8 Rubel back then), was shockingly too big to fail. Nobody asked soviet people about this, like nobody asked us whether we like to pump 17 trillion dollars into fat throats of nowadays global oligarchs including MIC. Back then, narcissismic economists, in fear of losing their jobs or head, proclaimed that nothing wrong would happen and that this is unique soviet way to brighter future for everyone for millennia of Soviet world supremacy to come. The 20 years later Soviet Union was no more.
I bet those economists who survived, change of costumes in 1990-ties, all have jobs in prime US banking institutions, preaching the same crap to the deaf choir of zombified Americans while country is being robed at scale no more unprecedented since it already happened almost at that scale in last years of USSR.
One interesting note at the end.
Very little known Philosphical History theory of “Convergence of Political Systems” was floating in the middle of last century seemingly indicating that political systems of USA and Soviets would eventually merge into something new but different from what it was before. Of course, it met devastating criticism from American as well as Soviet economists and philosophers, who called it utter non-sense adding that their respective systems will thrive in unchanged perfection for millennia, signifying the End of History.
Ironically, while, USSR is gone, here, we have practically, banking monopole, industrial monopole, communications monopole, massive surveillance, synthetic candidates and farcical elections, fake choices, fake jobs, fake retirement, fake healthcare, exhausted resources, astronomic debt never to be repaid, eternal ZIRP for few, massive monopolistic propaganda, state lawlessness, no Habeas Corpus, militarized police force, foreign wars (Afganistan), torture, legal kidnapping, murder and unlimited detention for mysterious enemies of the system. Should I go on ? It sounds like Soviet Union to me, except for Kim Kardashian butt. They missed that.
I also think that, those pathetic philosophers also were wrong. The “Theory of Convergence” was a crap. The fact is that there was no converging, these systems were in their core identical all along, systems in which elites care only about their absolute power and other priorities, like fate of their slaves or citizens, are unconditionally rescinded. Only ideologies, meaning propaganda programming of our brain to love our tortures, were somewhat given local flavors. That’s all.
So, what it was that about socialism or capitalism, I forgot. May be its time to finally have one.
Excellent analysis. Since Adam Smith, the bankers and industrialists have perverted the ideals of both socialism and capitalism, and have essentially sold us all pigs with lipstick dressed like socialists or capitalists, but under the wrappings after all, just the same old pigs. And as a society, we are manipulated and set against one another, politically and militarily, by those wo wish to divert attention from the real pigs eating at the trough.
"And as a society, we are manipulated and set against one another, politically and militarily, by those (who) wish to divert attention from the real pigs eating at the trough."
Whenever someone goes on a rant about "welfare payments" and "SNAP benefits" for poor people, be sure to point out that the Fed had no problem with spending tens of billions of taxpayer dollars a month on QE to bail out the banking system. Also be sure to note how the US government has spent about $15 trillion dollars* on social programs over the last 50 years, while the Fed burned through over $4 trillion dollars in about five years bailing out the banking system. That represents an annual "burn rate" of nearly 3X, while benefitting only the very wealthiest.
* Source - Cato Institute - http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/PA694.pdf
When did anyone live under capitalism in the US? Maybe some 40 years ago?
Nobody who just glimpses some truth can name the US system a capitalism. It's crony capitalism. Big government, big firms and whatever big do everything to keep anyone else small. In a capitalism, the buyer would decide, and it would be produced what is asked for. But if you disallow all kinds of production and disallow the means to production in so many ways. You just support one the ever growing government with ever growing injustice.
Of course people blame capitalism, because they are brainwashed every day by the politician, bureaucrats, journalists that they do live in a capitalism and that one must do everything to keep it at bay. And this just can be done by the "good ones" form the state. Freedom is a terrible threat for them and capitalism is about freedom, so it's clear what to do. Blame bad things to capitalism and good things are JUST done be the honest guys from government.
Yes, of course, the lazy, the stupid, the immoral, the incomeptent, the failures, the thieves and parasites ALL prefer to live off other people's earnings (socialism) rather than off their own earnings - this is not news.
Ah but consider...
Do men feel anger, envy, strife, confusion, and unfulfilled... when they don't work?
Not to say that "Arbeit Macht Frie".
But the condemnation that Arab Men without purpose committed 9011 Tragedy. That idle men are dangerous in every country. Beware the ides of March.
- The Lie is that US Government ignores this fact, and is preparing new civil rights cuts fore their purpose.
- Feel Me?
- Dems & Republicans are complicity, Just as the Rancher in Nevada was saying... we want purpose, we need purpose, we must have sense of accomplishment, even if it is government imposed, there is no other spiritual substitute in a Depression
Another seriously flawed, but admittedly common view of socialism. Socialism is NOT living off of other people's earnings, but instead involves the idea of s dociety more equally sharing the rewards of production.
Usually, the same peole who hold this flawed view are the same ones who think we live in a capitalist society, when in fact we live under a system of controlled markets, corruption and predatory business practices - a far cry from the principles of 'free markets'.
"Socialism is NOT living off of other people's earnings, but instead involves the idea of s dociety more equally sharing the rewards of production."
That is how it is sold, but then, as soon as the lazy asses see they don't have to work and they still get a share of what everyone else produces, it always devolves into an unsustainable shit storm of taking more and more and more from the shrinking contingent who produce. That is why it always fails.
Yes, socialism always fails. That's why the citizens of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark are all suffering so horribly. It's why the factory workers in Germany's "social market economy" are so miserably treated, and their factories are all falling into ruin surrounded by crumbling cities filled with feral creatures and gunshots in the night.
Oh, wait, sorry, that's Detroit. My bad. Carry on with how bad socialism is.
blah, blah, blah stinking pigshit
Bottom line: you parasite scum live off other people's earnings because you are immoral, have no honor or pride, are lazy, incompetent, inferior, and personal failures to earn your own way, so you wind bags invent an infinite amount of pseudo-intellectual stinking shit to justify theft and parasitism, ie one creature, the parasite, YOU, lives off another creature, the host, ie the successful & accomplished.
The judgement day is come for you all, and there will be NO mercy for any of you.
One problem with the common and truly ignorant assumption of "welfare" is that it's only for the poor (of course, anyone of a different ethnicity is automatically hated if they need a hand up)...
Conservatives and Republicans love to talk about welfare for the poor. The problem is, they believe their own propaganda. Their uneducated voting base certainly does.
Welfare for the poor runs about 1.5% of GDP excluding unemployment compensation, which is paid insurance, but of course, Republicans will lump that in at another 1.5%.
Except…right-wing Republican welfare, is running in the trillions.
1. Off-shore tax evasion schemes that surpass ten to fifteen trillion that support neither our economy nor our war effort (first class treason by our rich class in my book). Oh...it's also the reason YOU AND I pay an average 25% in taxes while Romney and friends pay an average 14%.
2. Privatization schemes like prisons that forces taxpayers to pay prison companies for unused cells ($200 per day). Some free market, eh? And now they want to do the same with our schools. Guess who gets the roofing contract?
3. Defense contractor schemes that add profit to a job government does for zero profit (private truck drivers getting $120K and US soldier drivers get $30K). Private contractors charging $100 for a case of soda sold to US soldiers is a fine example of "privatization".
4. The “Faith Based Initiative” scheme implemented by GW Bush that forces every US taxpayer to fund churches. That's right...completely unconstitutional...but no one on the left or right complained as they both have churches creating zombie voters. Pat Robertson took $500,000 in one year alone
5. Majority of states that take more Federal money than they contribute are Red states.
6. One hundred billion EACH YEAR in oil and gas subsidies (currently at all time record profits) and farm subsidies
7. The military-industrial complex that pays off your conservative Congressman to keep hyping another war so the US spends TEN TIMES as much as the next ten largest nations.
And don't blame progressives...they haven't had a majority in Congress for over twenty years. The GOP took Congress in 1994 and conservative Democrats (1/3 of Dems) voted with Republicans, giving the GOP control of the US Congress AND our money for TWENTY years STRAIGHT.
And to top it all off...the average American knows no history..if they did...they would know that every 8 to 12 years of "conservative" Republican administration ends in economic collapse in order to transfer wealth through "bailouts" back to old money.
1920 to 1033...Harding, Coolidge, Hoover = Massive deregulation, massive disparity of wealth ending in Great Depression and banking collapse and taxpayer bailouts.
1980 to 1992...Reagan-Bush = Deregulation, Recession, Savings And Loan collapse and 300 billion taxpayer bailout
2000 to 2008...Bush-Cheney = Deregulation, Great Recession, banking collapse, 800 billion taxpayer bailout.
No, Republicans aren't only simple-minded fools with no concept of running an economy...it's what they do to steal the US treasury every other generation.
The conservative Republican welfare machine is the greatest scam on planet earth. Don't ask how your country is being gutted from the inside.
Next time you hear a constipated “conservative” rant about welfare, tell him to shove it.
Do you actually believe your own bullshit?
Stupid Fuck.
Conservatives do not like stealing period....understand?
But in typical lib fashion, you think that since the corporations steal, we should allow teeming masses of disgusting liberals (like you) to steal as well.
Your messiah has been blowing mega-corporations as hard as any repub ever would. Or didn't you know that?
I love how libs like you tell us red states are welfare takers...when California has 1/3rd of the entire welfare caseload on the country. And you like to use "state" stats when its convienent, instead of particulars.
Why don't you use city stats instead? Oh...that would not fit your narrative. Anyone on this blog knows who gets welfare. FREE CLUE: repubs run on cutting it, dems run on expanding...get the point?
Oh...you forgot to include Clinton repealing Glass Steagal and allowing China into the WTO. Fixed it for ya.
Please tell us you did not breed.
More lies & propaganda from one of the socialist parasite thieves trying to divert attention from his own immorality, incompetence, inadequacy & personal failure to earn his own way rather than steal other people's earnings through partnership with corrupt traitorous unscrupulous parasite politicians.
The judgement day is coming for you, and your lies will not save you from the justice you deserve.
I would take exception to the first chart results, but it comes down to what people describe as a "free market economy" and "socialism".
In the UK, I'd say the 28% who disagree with free market economics and the 65% who agree with it are actually the other way round in truth.
If you peel back the labels you find about 65% of Brits pay lip service to free market economics and prefer some sort of "State controlled free market economics", which of course questions whether that is actually free market economics at all. And given that government has no money of its own, that usually amounts to corporatism. They want State involvement (central planning, control and State funding) - not simply to prevent abuse or crookery - but for much more. Of course many of these people happily deny being socialists. The huge numbers of pressure groups who constantly apply pressure for more State spending on their favourite pet project gives the lie to their claim of supporting free market economics.
Therein lies the problem: there are very many people who believe in various levels of Statism but deny it makes them socialists or even worse.
Anyone who doubts this only needs to look at the national level of support for the Labour Party. After years of Blair/Brown's socialist, centrally-planned economic incompetence which bankrupted the country, Labour only just missed out on winning the 2010 election and may still win the 2015 election (given that Cameron is himself a left-of-centre empty suit).
That doesn't look like 65% of people support free market economics to me.
i reckon the percentage is infinitely higher, the vast majority are just too uneducated to correctly identify their own position as socialist.
Most "capitalists" don't recognize or accept many of the facets of socialism that they like and support. For example, police, fire department, army, air traffic control, sewage, and roads. Those are not considered socialist because they like and need them.
Of course, I would agree that many poor people like the overt, text-book features of socialism such as welfare, free public education, and healthcare. How many rich white people (let's be honest, the top 1% is mainly that) would like these things all of a sudden if we took away their wealth and privilege? Most.
The Randian ideal is bullshit. Think about the Shangri-La of Atlas Shrugged. They live protected under their magical dome, a purely socialist feature to their ideal world if I ever saw one. Their subsistance existance only works because they are a small community completely isolate from the rest of the world. And their economy is magically perfectly in balance. Never drought or crop pests. No breakdown of machines. No disease that requires research labs to cure.
And by the way, Japan is neither a democracy nor a capitalistic economy.
Beautifully put, Expat. It deserves repeating:
"Most "capitalists" don't recognize or accept many of the facets of socialism that they like and support. For example, police, fire department, army, air traffic control, sewage, and roads. Those are not considered socialist because they like and need them.
Of course, I would agree that many poor people like the overt, text-book features of socialism such as welfare, free public education, and healthcare. How many rich white people (let's be honest, the top 1% is mainly that) would like these things all of a sudden if we took away their wealth and privilege? Most."
The term "capitalism" is the product of Marx twisted elitist, socialist mind. It fails to differentiate between mercantilistic capitalist philosophies of political economy and those approaching an open market economy, therefore generating more heat than light. "Presumably", the best economic system affords the most prosperity for the largest segment of the people, most likely expanding a broad middle class segment as it provides many opportunities for upward mobility. The only philosophy of political economy that achieves that circumstance is laissez faire free enterprise because it levels the playing field to enable anyone who wishes to enter the market to compete without government intervening to perpetuate monopolies and play favorites.
We ought to try it again. It was killed as it was budding in 1865 by insider trader "Dishonest" Abe Lincoln and his Union, proto fascist branch socialistic Republican cronies pursuing the Whiggish holy grail of "internal improvements".
+1,000
If socialism ever COULD work, the government won't let it, just as they won't let capitalism work. You mentioned firemen. How about the fact that the government wants to force volunteer firemen against their will into unions? Is that a pleasurable feature of socialism? Or capitalism on the pretend side: Solyndra. Think Solyndra was ever intended to become a long term, profitable solar panel manufacturing company? Lots of money disappeared down that rabbit hole. Want to know what's best, really? It's capitalism, and here's why: look at nature. Set up a wolf pack with six members. Two are the best hunters. They have to now go out and hunt for the entire pack (socialism). Think the pack will survive? Not for long. OK: Bees. Drones only purpose is to mate with the queen. But afterwards, they are driven out of the hive, because they don't work. Think bees have a better chance of long term survival by keeping and feeding the useless drones? Capitalism is broken because the government provides protection for monopolies, and people in positions of responsibility fail to maintain their ethics and make corrupt decisions. Isn't that what we are seeing out there? It's people that abuse, not the systems themselves.
The Randian ideal is bullshit. Think about the Shangri-La of Atlas Shrugged.
It was her Shangri-La; achieving wealth and status by sitting and blabbing, extolling hard work and competition, while (literally) sucking off a Rockefeller.
I call it Randian Rockefellation.
Not difficult to guess who her new cult benefits most.
It’s an open conspiracy for anyone to see. David Rockefeller writes openly in his Memoirs in chapter 27.
“We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the work is now much more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.”
– David Rockefeller, founder of the Trilateral Commission, in an address to a meeting of The Trilateral Commission, in June, 1991
No one is able to benefit in a socialist system. Except fot the corrupt politicians and industrialists.
If you voted for that stinking faggot Kenyan cocksucking monkey the first time, then you are a fucking pathetic useless waste of fucking oxygen and no better than a fucking pig waiting to get butchered and as mindless a cunt as was ever born with only half a brain.
I cant be bothered to waste time attempting to describe the utter inadequacies of those fucking retards who voted for the Kenyan cock jockey the second time around, but dropping the cunts into a lime pit 1,000 ft deep would be merciful to everyone else
This is so stupid. You can't find %25 of Americans that know what socialism or capitalism is to begin with.
What capitalism? With Fed controlled rates, oligarchic corporate rule of the military industrial media complex there isn't a vestige
of capitalism left (free trade is just colonialism under a disinformative name) what the U.S. has iS FASCISM.
What socialism? Don't know what that means? Its whatever jack boot Republicans and Conservatives call everything
that isn't the Christian Fascist corporate ruling government they would like to control everything beyond what they already appear to control.
This socialism versus capitalism crap is just an echo of Democracy vs Communist crap of the 50's and a lame one at that.
The Democrats and the President are just as fascist as the other side just moving towards the state controlled economy
rather than the corporate controlled state big deal. The head and the tail of the same corrupt UNDEMOCRATIC UNFREE
coin.
Spouting this crap plays into the TechDemoRepublocratoFascist Oligarchy's greedy paws. Move the dialogue on. And
thing about what the hell you are writing before you work a story off some dumb ass meaningless "statistic" you dug
out of the asshole of the media which is the the Oligarchy propaganda arm like the Fed.
Get A grip.
wiki the terms if you are confused or something.
What is true is about %25 percent of voters voted to subjugate the rest of us non-voters to the one party fascist system
that pretends to be democracy as long as the %75 percent let them get away with it.
The situation is far from hopeless. The %75 who won't vote cause "its pointless" "its fixed" etc.
can fix it because they outnumber our dictators and their wanna be voting stooges at least 3::1.
IT is time to depose the oligarchs punish the banksters take the welfare state out of the
military and homeland security unplug the geeks at the NSA literally and start over
with government for the people by the people, kick start democracy and bury these
fascist corporate overlords once and for all.
After 40 years of socialist "education", I'm surprised the number is only 25%.
Premise is ridiculous: socialism is the ownership of the means of production by the people themselves: not a government agency, not a corporation.
Most Americans have no idea this is what socialism is and most certainly don't want to do this if they did know because most Americans are damn lazy.
Period.
What's even more silly is most Americans think corporate-government merger to own & operate everything is socialism, instead of fascism, and mostly want that, or, a "no label required" system of "gimme freebees" aka the FSA, which is 100% anti-socialist, anti-capitalist, neutral on fascism or feudalism.
Furthermore: having thousands to 100's of thousands of de-centralized workers' co-ops owning & operating their own "everything" for business is 0% central controlled and 100% socialist, but ideologues in Murrika are brainwashed to deny this. It's like the special part of the brain used to process measurable fact & established definitions has been smacked repeatedly with the Numpty-Hammer so as to ensure it will never be used.
So you state it clear. Socialism means state ownership and capitallism is ownership. And then you declare that nobody understand that. I really wish upon you the old sowjet union. You should really get what you seem to admire.
No, I stated the precise opposite so I'll add that you can't read & are brainwashed.
Socialism means no state ownership for state is not the people.
When a group of individual persons get together and own the means of production, that is non-state socialism to be the workers and the owners simultaneously. That is socialism. When the state which is not the people runs things that is not socialism.
Thanks to to make your ideas that clear. Should anyone think about it whatever he/she likes. As long as you go in peace and let me live in peace I'll be fine with your fantastic "new world". I just with it on the other side of the earth as far away from me as it can get. I wish you all the best. You'll need it just to survive. But that's fine with me. it was your choice.
Nothing new about it. Tribal socialism & tribal capitalism both happened at the same time & never really failed.