General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 57

That's the democratic socialist thing.. some socialism that is funded by a strong capitalist economy.

 

Nope, that's not what that is. See: any of the 26 links given to you on that subject. That is known as social democracy

 

Well then everyone including Bernie is using it wrong.

 

This is just gold - Fox News FB page

 

Yep. Relative to the American center of politics, FDR liberalism is socialism.

And, by the way, we've seen the erosion of social democracy as a viable long-term model for the past three decades. It has collapsed under the weight of market imperatives.

 

Would love to see the source that it is "collapsing" since everyone is saying that the countries we should be looking to are the ones that have it. I would also like to see a country that is fully socialist that is doing very well right now.

 

hate begets hate, I guess

Surrendering to Death

How is a faith being associated with racism? Just take out the word “Islam” and replace it with “communism.” It’s an ideology. The same way the Rosenbergs could sell nuclear secrets from within America is the same way Muslim terrorists can attack us from within. It’s okay to be discerning when it comes to Muslims in this day and age.

 

Most recently, the French government has raised retirement ages and is currently trying to implement laws that make it easier to terminate employees. In England, the budgets for social services have been slashed and there have been attempts to privatize portions of the NHS. Similarly, Sweden is seeing a sharp emergence of class differences as a result of neoliberal reform; for example, they cut corporate taxes by five percent, cut the marginal tax rate by twenty seven percent and reduced public spending by eighteen percent. So, yes, they have been subject to the crises of profitability as well, which has lead to rapid deregulation and liberalization of the market. With that said, none of these things were pre-given, they were won through class struggle. We can look to those reforms won by others as important and desirable, as thing for which we should fight, while also recognizing the limitations of the framework, i.e., the internal contradictions within capitalism that create crises, and consequently, push for measures to restore their profitability through labor laws, reduction of public spending, privatizarion and so forth. Given these internal dynamics, we should fight to be more like Sweden, but have as our aim something beyond the Swedish model that is permanent. The only way to do that is through the elimination of a particular set of relations of production, which have as their aim profit.

 

Sanders choices for the platform committee are so good:

The paper also reported that Sanders picked James Zogby, the president of the Arab-American Institute in Washington and a well-known advocate for Palestinian issues, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), one of two Muslim members of Congress, Dr. Cornel West, an academic and an activist for racial equality, author and environmentalist Bill McKibben and Deborah Parker, an advocate for the Native American community.

 

I wouldn't call any of those things as a sign they are collapsing. The French retirement age isn't that high.. and now that people live longer, it can become unsustainable to care for people for that long. If your employee is terrible, it shouldn't be that hard to fire them. A lot goes into what is happening with Sweden. For one, they need to compete in a global market, and having big restrictions on businesses forces them out and sends jobs away. I know this sounds like it's capitalism's fault, but I don't know how a country can provide all the modern day items people want by producing it all itself. It has to interact with other capitalist countries, and they aren't just going to share things with them for free. I don't see how a socialist country that can't produce goods at a better price than another country is going to do well. Also, tons of immigration right now, which can hurt welfare states a lot.

And again, what is one socialist country that is doing well right now?

 

Yep.

Sanders identifies as a Democratic Socialist, I presume because it doesn't have the partisan connotation of "Social Democrat," but his policy recommendations are purely social democratic. Or he may be like persons such as myself who believe in the Democratic Socialist philosophy, identify with its tenets, and desire it as an end goal, but first prefer the implementation of social democratic measures.

 

This is also an interesting article when you talk about Cubas healthcare. You keep talking about labor being exploited, and Cuba exploits their doctors, who are actually the ones producing for their economy. You can't pay the doctor the same as a pool boy.. eventually they notice.


http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/w...-over-exodus-of-the-islands-doctors.html?_r=0

 

this needs to be fixed. When our quality of health is absolute garbage in the US, physicians are not earning that big dollar.

 

What is the cost to become a physician in those other countries? Do they also have crushing medical school loans to pay back?

 

I've said a bunch of times that any move to a single payer system needs to include an overhaul to med school, or at the very least how we charge them for it. You can't ask doctors to keep taking on debt at the levels they do and get a pay cut.

Richter is in Med school I believe, Btw, so he knows more than most on the subject i assume.

 

Okay.

 

With regard to people living longer, that is actually related to wealth as well. The rich, on average, live longer than poor people and there is a correspondence between cities with more egalitarian and generous welfare structures. The idea, then, that living longer is the reason for an increase in the retirement age can be dispatched out of hand. But, if we'd like to stay on the topic, this is essentially saying that work should comprise most of one's life. I reject that notion. It isn't the sole way one can be productive and contribute to society. If we structured the economy differently, one could contribute to society, whilst also having limited work times and also be able to enjoy the full fruits of their labor.

We aren't talking about the extremes here, we are talking about an actual situation in which people are fired and replaced by younger workers who, as a result of the labor markets, are willing to get paid less. In other words, it has less to do with performance and more to do with profitability. The labor laws being eroded provided job security and recourse to challenge the arbitrary nature of firings. Job security is a human right and it is important that workers have access to the levers of power to challenge the owners of capital.

To an extent, you are correct. They do have to compete with other companies, and the mechanism to do so is to suppress the living conditions of workers. That is precisely the point. We live in a society in which the health of the economy hinges on the average person being exploited and deprived of basic rights. This has only gotten worse as the contradictions of neoliberalism have sharpened and requires capital to infiltrate and decimate a variety of institutions once understood to belong to the commons.

Immigrants contribute more to the social safety net than they take out actually.

"Socialist country" is a misnomer. There is no such thing as socialism in one country. We can still point to the better living standards in the more egalitarian societies, but they need to be surpassed in order to make them permanent and more democratic. Once again, you're operating under the assumption that capitalism is working, which is a function of a sort of Eurocentrism. Look in parts of Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia, or the Middle East, and one can see what capitalism has wrought. Half of the world's population live on a dollar and have no access to clean water. That is not the hallmark of a functioning economic system.

 

100% correct. If we weren't coming out with upwards of 200K of debt, the compensation wouldn't need to be so high. But that's just it, why is the cost so exorbitant in the US while in Europe, they get the same quality education for a fraction of the cost.

I can't speak for social systems in other realms but lower the cost of higher education is absolutely worth it.

 

I don't understand why doctors are fetishized and used as examples for why capitalism is awesome. I understand they have skill. But, the idea that their profession makes them more important or valuable, as humans, is pretty ridiculous. I value both the doctor and low-wage worker in the same way: they are important for the social metabolism of society. Perhaps a more equal society would produce more access to the "good professions", increasing the likelihood of medical breakthroughs.

 

Very few people would stay doctors if they were held in the same regard as a low-wage worker. Why would I spend years and years in school to learn how to perform complex surgery when I make as much as a person who learns their profession in six months and can perform it with little to no thought. A more "equal" society would have a hard time convincing anyone they should be a doctor.

I don't know, that seems pretty basic to me.

 

If they're doctors for "regard" or social status, then they're probably shitty people. One would think they'd want to, you know, help people. The attachment of money to social standing and self-worth is a fiction. It is a way to reify the current social relations. We know that the people making the most money are not doctors; they're in the unproductive sectors of the economy. By your logic, then, wouldn't the doctor throw his hands up and become a stockbroker?

(Semi-related: we are currently seeing the proletarianization of the medical profession. There's been a significant decline of private practices and an influx of doctors into larger, more corporate medical facilities, which strips away any autonomy and control doctors once had, along with a decline in income. These holy figures are experiencing the squeeze as well.)

 

No? I never said people became doctors for the sole purpose of making money. They are (and should) be compensated for their skill and effort though, which are both considerable when compared to many "low-wage workers". How does your equal society entice people to become doctors and put themselves through years of schooling and grueling work shifts (and not just in terms of time, but of the mental and physical difficulties inherent to the position)? You may be able to recruit some people who are willing to do that solely out of the goodness of their hearts, and more power to them, but I'm fairly certain that without the incentive of more money you'd be hard pressed to get everyone you "needed".

For that matter, how do you convince someone to pick up trash vs working a cushy desk job? Does that come from a desire to, you know, clean up after people? Is there a sorting hat I don't know about?

 

In our world, picking up trash is a job, a part of a broader division of labor. Ideally, picking up trash and the maintenance of our environment would be a collective project, of which everyone would be a part. Similarly, the sort of division of labor you're arguing for - one in which money incentivizes people to do beneficial labor - loses sense in an economic system where everything is distributed equally and democratically decided upon, where there are no socioeconomic barriers to block or punish people for engaging in a particular sort of labor. Conversely, in this economic system, we are seeing a shortage in doctors. It certainly isn't that there is a lack of incentive so much as determinate social dynamics have erected roadblocks to the profession. I would argue that rearranging our economic model would provide the bases for eliminating the roadblocks to fulfilling labor, which necessarily eliminates the hierarchy of labor. We can now dismiss the moralistic arguments.

 

The ABCs of Socialism | Jacobin