“You are a French socialist who has been bashing the US capitalist system in every opportunity and telling us how great the utterly failed European socialist system is and how superior it is to our system. Also you have been telling us that the US is going to be defeated militarily in Iraq. Please go and express your lies, your US bashing, your capitalist system bashing, your love to socialism, and your defeatism on DU or KOS where you belong and they will love you there.”
I feel the love!
But wait. I don’t get it. I’m not supposed to write to you, right? Well, I guess you’ve gone ahead and given me permission.
So let’s go, seriatim.
I am French. True. And American. Both. It’s ok.
Socialist? No. I do not believe the state should own the means of production. I believe in the regulatory state, because economies unregulated by laws are bad places. I also believe in Insurance 101, which says that the bigger the pool, the cheaper the insurance for everybody. France’s health insurance plan versus America’s certainly bears that out, so yes, I do indeed support French style health insurance, but that’s not socialism, any more than US Medicare or Social Security or road systems are socialism. There are some infrastructural and human capital issues that the state is best positioned to organize. I happen to think that pensions and health insurance are one of them. You think that makes me a socialist. I think it makes me like...hmmmm...like Ronald Reagan, who expanded Social Security, and like George W. Bush, who expanded Medicare. They weren’t socialists.
Bashing the US capitalist system? Nope. I have been bashing Republican tax policies, particularly the extremely low capital gains and dividends taxes. I think capital gains and dividends should be taxed just like any other dollars of income, because that’s what they are. I don’t think that wages gained by labor should pay three times the tax rate than dollars gained by capital-on-capital should pay. Sweat is harder than passive investment. It should not have far higher taxes placed on it. I bash and ridicule the elitist arguments to the contrary. I think the abolition of the estate tax is ridiculous. I don’t want an American hereditary nobility. Do you? The tax code ain’t the capitalist system, though. Those are aspects of the Republican view of taxes that I think are foolish.
Another really idiotic Republican decision is the one that says we have to dissolve our industrial base because Chinese slaves are cheap and we cannot impose any sort of barriers to tarriffs to prevent slave labor from putting Americans out of work. Nor do I think there is one damned good reason to import any food from China. That’s not knocking free trade. Have free trade with Europe, Japan, the civilized world all you want, but there’s no reason to lard the coffers of Communist China with American lucre bought at prices that put Americans out of work. The sort of conservative who says we must is a denizen of the Republican Party, as I am, but he and I have nothing in common on economic policy, and he’s selling your kids down the river. I’m trying to have rational policies that will protect us. That ain’t socialism.
The US is going to be defeated in Iraq. It is going to happen because the political will to fight the war is collapsing at home, and the Democrats are either going to cut off the money or win the White House and bring home the troops. From the beginning of the war in Iraq the Bush White House has bobbled it. We SHOULD be there, but we needed, and still need, a strategy to win. Saying that we’re winning didn’t work for Baghdad Bob, and it’s not going to work for you either. Sorry.
I don’t lie.
I don’t bash the US.
I don’t bash the “capitalist system”. I take the mickey out of bad tax and trade policies proposed by some, not all, Republicans.
I don’t love socialism: the means of production are hunky dory in private hands. I agree with Reagan’s social security reforms and Bush’s Medicare reforms. Go talk to them.
Defeatism. I am no more a defeatist than Charles De Gaulle was when he said, in the 1930s, that Maginot won’t work and we need air and armor. He made a lot of enemies because the establishment wanted Maginot and got it. Maginot didn’t work. Our war strategy in Iraq hasn’t worked. The Surge has hope, but not much. It’s too bad. But I won’t be the guy calling the troops home.
DU? They’re crazy over there.
Kos? Never read it, sorry.
Nice to see that you would like me to leave.
But is it your site?
Do you, for example, contribute to it?