Socialism viewed positively by 36% of Americans

[Bill3000]

That cartoon is misleading... here's government spending as a percentage of GDP since 1950 (I cut out World War II for obvious reasons.)

...which has nothing to do with socialism, unless the freest and most capitalist nation of the world is Myanmar for having the lowest government spending as a percentage of GDP.

 

[civ_king]

That cartoon is misleading... here's government spending as a percentage of GDP since 1950 (I cut out World War II for obvious reasons.)

WTF? AKA Red Herring

 

[Formaldehyde]

Ford, Reagan, GHWB and GWB are socialists?

 

[Elta]

everything below Ama, I am do cereal.

I don't understand what your graph has to do with the one I posted.

Yours is GDP and government spending, mine is tax rate.

...which has nothing to do with socialism, unless the freest and most capitalist nation of the world is Myanmar for having the lowest government spending as a percentage of GDP.

WTF? AKA Red Herring

Ford, Reagan, GHWB and GWB are socialists?

 

[willemvanoranje]

GWB used interventionist economic policies only for the rich and the security industry, but interventionist is not necessarily socialist. That's a wise lesson to be learned as well for the many people on these forums who just put socialism in the same corner with social-democracy, totalitarianism, planned economies, etc.

 

[RedRalph]

Free enterprise and entrepreneurship viewed positively by nearly 85% of Americans

So become Yugoslavia instead of the USSR.

 

[Formaldehyde]

GWB used interventionist economic policies only for the rich and the security industry, but interventionist is not necessarily socialist.

I think the wise lesson to be learned in this particular case is to always be on the lookout for sarcasm.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Louis XIV intervened heavily in his economy as well; was he a socialist?

 

[Merkinball]

...which has nothing to do with socialism, unless the freest and most capitalist nation of the world is Myanmar for having the lowest government spending as a percentage of GDP.

Why doesn't it? Socialism can be fueled by debt spending just as much as it can be by collecting present day taxes. Who cares if present day federal income taxes at the top are 40%? Let's pretend we had a balanced budget with present day spending. Where would those numbers go up to? How do you raise 1.6 trillion dollars in federal taxes to balance that budget? Then you have 7% FICA and medicaid/medicare tax. People in my area face 6% property tax rates. People in NYS face 7% top marginal tax rate. You have taxes on gas, taxes on tolls, a cable TV tax, 4% local sales tax, etc, etc. People like my folks do not see half of their earned income. Let alone people in the top tax bracket, let alone if NYS and the feds had a balanced budget.

The idea that we don't have a more...socialist (I know, I know, it's not technically socialist) economy simply because of taxes is absurd. Because we're just going to be paying for todays socialism and trillion dollar plus debts later. At some point the feds are going to realize, particularly with 10% unemployment, that taxes are going to have to be raised drastically in order to correct the direction of this nation. At that point, what will be? What happens if cap and trade is implemented? What happens if the feds take over the other half of healthcare? At what point do we become a centralized socialist nation? We're already a European welfare state, we're just taxing later instead of taxing it now.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

What about higher taxes makes something objectively more socialist? To borrow my above reference, the taxes (on those who were actually taxed) by the ancien regime were a much much larger part of a citizen's income than today, and France had similar problems at times with budget deficits (and, similarly, times of great surplus, which predecessors were more than happy to spend on pointless wars...), does that mean that Monarchist France was more socialist than the United States is today?

My point being that taxes do not alone make something "more socialist." It all depends on where those taxes fall, how much it is, and what the money goes towards, but those things make it increasingly leftist, not socialist.

 

[Merkinball]

What about higher taxes makes something objectively more socialist? To borrow my above reference, the taxes (on those who were actually taxed) by the ancien regime were a much much larger part of a citizen's income than today, and France had similar problems at times with budget deficits (and, similarly, times of great surplus, which predecessors were more than happy to spend on pointless wars...), does that mean that Monarchist France was more socialist than the United States is today?

My point being that taxes do not alone make something "more socialist." It all depends on where those taxes fall, how much it is, and what the money goes towards, but those things make it increasingly leftist, not socialist.

What about the way our taxes are spent, and the way that new proposed social programs, are not socialist. Equal healthcare for all is socialist. Social welfare programs are socialist. Massive spending for public education is socialist. Nationalizing GM and Chrysler while rewarding the unions and punishing private investors was socialist. Cheezy, there's a monolithic transfer of wealth from the top to the bottom in this country. Probably at least a quarter of the nations GDP. I know it doesn't fit the mold of your ideological and impossible version of socialism, but it still fits the mold of many versions of socialism.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Equal healthcare for all is socialist.

Equal healthcare for all may very be considered by most in this country to be so, but is minimum healthcare for all socialist? Or is it merely addressing an obvious problem which drastically needs to be resolved? A problem which the Republicans have failed to provide a reasonable plan to deal with it besides largely ignoring that it even exists?

Socialism in the US has typically become more popular when enough people are being exploited. In a sense, unions, subsidizing the poor, and anti-trust laws actually work against socialism becoming prevalent because they help to keep the public outrage in check.

People seem to want to forget incidents like Matewan.

 

[Cutlass]

That cartoon is misleading... here's government spending as a percentage of GDP since 1950 (I cut out World War II for obvious reasons.)

That graph is meaningless and misleading. It is comparing crisis years to ordinary years. It paints a very false picture.


As for the rest, I would be shocked if 1/3 of the people who replied to the pool that they viewed socialism favorably had any real understanding of what socialism is. And I would be doubly shocked if 10% of the people with an unfavorable view of socialism had any real understanding of what it is.

This is America, after all

 

[Traitorfish]

Equal healthcare for all is socialist.

Questionable; it's an accepted centrist platform in most of Western Europe, with no particular assumptions as a precursor to- let alone result of- of proletarian seizure of power. Even in the UK, one of Western Europe's most reactionary nations, of the major parties only the Tories have suggested anything other than this state of affairs, and they limited themselves to suggesting that public subsidies could be contributed towards private healthcare for those who wished to use an alternative to the NHS. Honestly, it's typically just considered to be common sense.

 

[Merkinball]

Questionable; it's an accepted centrist platform in most of Western Europe, with no particular assumptions as a precursor to- let alone result of- of proletarian seizure of power. Even in the UK, one of Western Europe's most reactionary nations, of the major parties only the Tories have suggested anything other than this state of affairs, and they limited themselves to suggesting that public subsidies could be contributed towards private healthcare for those who wished to use an alternative to the NHS. Honestly, it's typically just considered to be common sense.

Just because it's centrist doesn't mean it's not socialist. Expropriating wealth from one group and redistributing it to another in the name of fairness and social justice is socialism. It's an antithetical position compared to classical liberalism.

@ Forma - Minimum healthcare for all is a socialist measure because of the above.

 

[Cutlass]

Conservative-capitalist Japan also has a national health care plan. Superior results than the US for 1/2 the money. It's one of the reasons Japan can so kick our asses at capitalism.

 

[Merkinball]

Conservative-capitalist Japan also has a national health care plan. Superior results than the US for 1/2 the money. It's one of the reasons Japan can so kick our asses at capitalism.

Japan hasn't been a conservative capitalist nation for about two decades now. If Japan had a balanced budget, they wouldn't be kicking our butts at anything.

 

[Bei1052]

I'd have a positive view of socialism if people got what they paid for.

 

[willemvanoranje]

Japan hasn't been a conservative capitalist nation for about two decades now. If Japan had a balanced budget, they wouldn't be kicking our butts at anything.

Well, it's not like the USA has one..

 

[I'm Cleo!]

The 17% of Republicans who view "socialism" positively is potentially the most interesting cohort in the survey, but it's probably just another example of the weird ~20% of Americans who will answer anything "yes" in surveys -- alien abductions, conspiracy theories, voting for Alan Keyes, &c.

Cleo