Posted on 05/14/2016 8:31:17 PM PDT by MarvinStinson
Around the world, nations that have been foolish enough to adopt socialist policies either collapsed or well on their way to doing so. Why, then, are so many in the U.S. enthralled with the idea?
Countries in direst economic shape have one thing in common: They rely on top-down socialist control to run their economies.
There are no long-term socialist success stories. None.
France, for instance, elected a socialist, Francois Hollande, as president in 2012. Today, France suffers a 10.3% jobless rate and 25% youth unemployment. Growth is less than 1%.
Brazil impeached Socialist President Dilma Rousseff for corruption, but her damage to the economy will last. As recently as 2010, Brazil was considered a bright star, awarded both an Olympics and a World Cup because of it. Rousseff’s massive borrowing and spending choked the economy, GDP shrank 3.8% and joblessness soared.
Venezuela’s nightmare. After the death of socialist dictator Hugo Chavez, his successor kept socialist policies in place. Today Venezuela is falling apart. Venezuelans now forage dirty streets for food — including stray dogs and cats.
Argentina’s economy was run into the ground by leftist populist President Cristina Kirchner. Newly elected centrist President Mauricio Macri has stabilized the economy, fixed the nation’s finances, and has returned to global debt markets for the first time since the nation defaulted 15 years ago.
Socialism is a failure, a brutal one. In its name, during the 21st century, millions of people were impoverished and disenfranchised, while over 100 million were murdered.
And yet, as Europe and South America move away from socialism, some in the U.S. embrace it. Polls show socialism is popular among millennials, and many young Americans support socialist Bernie Sanders for president.
Sadly, the left will never face the reality of their utopian central control’s failure everywhere.”
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
“Socialism Is Dying Everywhere — Except The U.S.”
No other countries left that can still afford it.
FTA (a very long and comprehensive one from 1999):
The most important foundation IS in place - social reform can only ever succeed ****on the back of a successful economy and the crystal apparition that is the third Way will melt into a messy blob without a thriving economy ******- it needs the tax revenue to fund revitalised services, it needs jobs for those going through its New Deal programmes. And jobs, for the exponents of the Third Way, are the way out of poverty.
The crash of 08 killed the momentum of the Third Way. But they kept going with the Social Justice aspect, ignoring that the newly-broke and to this day still-broke middle class under nations implementing the Third Way couldn’t carry the program. You’re seeing its death throes in all the nations this thread’s article mentions.
The BBC article never ends but it examines, back in 1999! the expected falldown/fallout of The Third Way if the universe didn’t cooperate, for whatever reason. The Clintons sold the elites of the entire planet that this was the way to go, and they all bought into it. Give the unwashed peasants Social Justice, and they will respond with amazing entrepreneurship and wealth-building, they said.
I think we used to have a term called “mixed economy” which encompassed those countries (more or less all of them) which had elements of both capitalism and government involvement. Aside from Marx, I don’t know of any theorists who talked about having no state activities. That being the case, I’m not sure that any of these labels help much. It seems that we have learned that there is a need for incentives to boost production. At the same time, it’s hard to imagine any complete withering away of the state. Private property, the rule of law, and some government seem to be the ingredients that we can expect.
“Every leftest I have ever heard speak on this issue, ALWAYS points out how social has worked in Scandinavian countries.”
And Sanders likes to use those countries as examples of socialist paradises, but in reality the Scandinavian countries have free market economies mixed with large welfare states, hardly socialist. And on recent years they’ve had to substantially cut welfare spending to control their budgets. Some of the countries were able to coast by for a while with huge oil revenues to support their relatively small populations, but with oil revenues falling, even those countries are now starting to run out of funds to support their nanny states.
True and very well stated.
You solve the marxist problem the same way Castro solved his Capitalist problem.
Line them up against a wall and shoot them.
There really is no other way.
Oh, and disenfranchise the parasite class , women, and those under 21.
Happy days are here again will be the result.
Hear hear, that’s the point exactly.
Never thought I would see the things we are seeing in my Lifetime.
The World is spinning out of control and the POTUS is obsessed with the Bathroom Habits of Crossdressers.
Makes you want to take a Stupid Pill and go through life without a care as a Brain Dead Liberal.
It’s dying here, too.
Vote Trump.
The headline on the article is wrong. Socialism is not dying. It is a cancer, and it is growing. The host countries are slowly dying from the cancer, but the cancer is quite healthy, and I believe spreading.
“Leading from behind”
However, it is difficult to ignore the respect for the military, nationalist feelings, patriotism, etc. associated with lots of fascist governments.
Although good Christians, Jews, and conservatives would never be racist or antisemitic, overt racism and antisemitism are more likely to sprout from bastardized versions of conservatism than bastardized versions of liberalism.
We can make strained claims that the leftists are the true racists because they are the ones keeping Blacks on the "welfare plantations" and that liberals are the true antisemites because they don't support Israel 100%, but that's just silly. Liberals far outnumbered conservatives in the civil rights movement, were much more accepting of interracial marriage, and there's a reason why Jews feel more comfortable in the Democrat Party and are generally afraid/hateful of anything smacking of populist conservatism such as Trump's presidential candidacy, e.g. case in point Kristol.
We can make the claim that there really was no such thing as communism or fascism. That all there ever were were oligarchic governments that painted over their authoritarian policies with the pretty colors that aided them most in oppressing the peoples of their countries: radical reds for the Communists, conservative browns for the Fascists.
There are even those that claim that there have only ever been capitalist economies. Some capitalist economies such as the Soviet Union were just degenerate monopolistic versions of capitalism. In a similar vein, it is argued that what we have in America is a more plutocratic or oligarchic form of capitalism.
Again, I don't know that it is helpful to try and use the fewest terms to describe what's happening in the world of politics and economics.
What fascism and communism might have in common is that they are both materialistic ideologies. If we as Christians wish to conserve Christianity and thus identify conservatism with Christianity, then we can say that both fascism and communism are opposed to us. If we claim to be on the right, then I guess that puts them on the left. But that seems too simplistic to me.
Are conservative Hindus who wish to retain their cultural ways really leftists because they don't want to conserve Christianity? That doesn't make sense.
Are libertarians whose beliefs are closest to those of classical liberalism also leftists? Many are materialistic and not particularly religious. But in what sense would it make any sense at all to lump fascists, communists, and libertarians into the same group?
My dear citizens! We are living through a National Socialist revolution. We emphasize the term “socialist” because many speak only of a “national” revolution. Dubious, but also wrong. It was not only nationalism that led to the breakthrough. We are proud that German socialism also triumphed. Unfortunately, there are still people among us today who emphasize the word “national” too strongly and who do not want to know anything about the second part of our world view, which shows that they have also failed to understand the first part.Complete lie.
Those who do not want to recognize a German socialism do not have the right to call themselves national. Only he who emphasizes German socialism is truly national. He who refuses to speak of socialism, who believes in socialism only in the Marxist sense, or to whom the word “socialism” has an unpleasant ring, has not understood the deepest meaning of nationalism. He has not understood that one can only be a nationalist when one sees social problems openly and clearly. And on the other hand, one can only be a socialist when he clearly sees that nationalism must triumph to protect the living space of a people from outside forces. […]
Marxist socialism was degraded to a concern only with pay or the stomach. The bourgeoisie degraded nationalism into barren hyper-patriotism. Both concepts, therefore, must be cleansed and shown to the people anew, in a crystal-clear form. The nationalism of our world view arrived at the right moment. Our movement seized the concept of socialism from the cowardly Marxists, and tore the concept of nationalism from the cowardly bourgeois parties, throwing both into the melting pot of our world view, and producing a clear synthesis: German National Socialism. That provided the foundation for the rebuilding of our people. Thus this revolution was National Socialist. …
— Hermann Goering, 1933
Liberals far outnumbered conservatives in the civil rights movement …
That is an antisemitic statement, whether you realize it or not. Antisemites have historically pinned Marxism on the Jews because of Marx’s own heritage (grandfather was a rabbi et al) while the man himself was an atheist. Saying something like that pigeonholes all Jews as Marxist.
… there’s a reason why Jews feel more comfortable in the Democrat(ic) Party …
The high taxes and horrible business climate (which leads to high unemployment) of socialism are the reasons why birthrates are negative in those countries (now including the US) for native populations. Socialism’s most visible failure is not the economic death of the country in question but the DEMOGRAPHIC one.
The South American examples are just newer to the process than Western European countries, but even they have watched their “white” Spanish populations fall while the Indians slowly regain the countries in question.
And Marx was raised Lutheran Christian. In fact, Rev. Richard Wurmbrand theorized that Marx may have actually been a Satanist.
Certainly not out of the realm of consideration. He talked a lot like Satan would, declaring his wish to de-throne God and all.
The core of socialism is The Truth which emanates from the Center. Those at the center are thus All Powerful. Those who support the center get a powerful sense of Virtue. These are called, by the Center, useful idiots, and they are idiots fore being so empty and shallow as to derive a sense of virtue from NOTHING.
Call it fascism, communism, or socialism, all have one thing in common: they all require a managed economy, which in turn dictates a totalitarian enforcement apparatus.
The timing is about right to ask if anyone has that picture of Trudeau junior praying in mosque, just before his election?
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