Posted on 05/30/2016 3:46:50 PM PDT by jazusamo
Socialism sounds great. It has always sounded great. And it will probably always continue to sound great. It is only when you go beyond rhetoric, and start looking at hard facts, that socialism turns out to be a big disappointment, if not a disaster.
While throngs of young people are cheering loudly for avowed socialist Bernie Sanders, socialism has turned oil-rich Venezuela into a place where there are shortages of everything from toilet paper to beer, where electricity keeps shutting down, and where there are long lines of people hoping to get food, people complaining that they cannot feed their families.
With national income going down, and prices going up under triple-digit inflation in Venezuela, these complaints are by no means frivolous. But it is doubtful if the young people cheering for Bernie Sanders have even heard of such things, whether in Venezuela or in other countries around the world that have turned their economies over to politicians and bureaucrats to run.
The anti-capitalist policies in Venezuela have worked so well that the number of companies in Venezuela is now a fraction of what it once was. That should certainly reduce capitalist "exploitation," shouldn't it?
But people who attribute income inequality to capitalists exploiting workers, as Karl Marx claimed, never seem to get around to testing that belief against facts such as the fact that none of the Marxist regimes around the world has ever had as high a standard of living for working people as there is in many capitalist countries.
Facts are seldom allowed to contaminate the beautiful vision of the left. What matters to the true believers are the ringing slogans, endlessly repeated.
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You stated that very well! :)
Bernie’s head is soft, like all socialists
“Democracy seeks equality in LIBERTY, while Socialism seeks equality in SERVITUDE.”
It’s that simple...
Yeah, but obozo and hildabeast and bernie will make sure it works this time!
AHA! Great to hear from Dr. Sowell again. Been awhile. I’m guessing he’s kicking back, and doing more with his interest in photography.
Thanks for the ping jaz. Appreciate it.
Is there any other kind?
I hope so, FRiend. Most welcome. :-)
Good one Bump!
Anoreth said they wouldn’t even give her a free hamburger at the Bernie Sanders rally, to which I assume she went only in the hope of free hamburgers and beer.
That’s only when you look at the consequences and the descendant corollaries.
Who does that?
Take rent control. That’s got to make housing for the masses more available and affordable, right? Of course it tends to mean buildings are not kept up, no new housing for a growing population except with exempted categories, which - having little to no competition in a high-demand environment - increases exponentially. Thus you get a small protected ‘elite’ who benefit from being in on the ground floor, and a decreasing supply of genuinely affordable housing.
Obvious, but one has to look at more than the side of the greedy and covetous that think wealth comes from dark magic.
I really wish articles such as this would break it down into pieces that the non-economic types could clearly understand. This led to this which led to this. Simply saying state controlled policies created shortages isn’t enough.
LOL! Thanks, that’s funny and I’d bet the farm that’s the only reason she went. :)
Either that or a political journalism project.
Okay :-)
It was in the street in front of my apartment. There was no way to avoid going.
Wimpy ate them all.
On paper socialism is always a successful utopia.
In real life practice, it is death, starvation, lack of everything, and chaos.
Bump!
And i forgot, two other thing in reality - people sell each other out, and the way you get what you need, bribes and the black market.
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