Lets begin with the Constitution and what the Constitutional job of politicians is supposed to be;
The whole point of the Constitution is to promote the general welfare of the American Nation/Community (defense, peace, justice etc. are all a part of general welfare); Preamble To The Constitution: We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
To promote the general welfare of the American People, Congress have been given specific powers (and they only promote the army part of their job, thus earning them the name "war party" at one time); Intro to Article 1 Section 8 in the Constitution: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
Since this post involves economics (which causes people's eyes to glaze over) and is rather lengthy I though I should begin with a summary to provide some focus...
Summary: Capitalism is noted for private ownership of property. Industrial Capitalism (or, as I like to call it, "Vulture Capitalism") all or most property and modes of production are owned by a few rich cats and everyone is subjected to abject poverty. Then there is Socialism where ALL means of production are controlled by the State (such as USSR, China etc. and have never been successful at alleviating the problem they sought to address, i.e. exploitation of the people). Finally there is Democratic Socialism which does NOT seek to control means of production but instead limit how much damage it can do and provide safety nets to help the population thrive and grow while maintaining rules against greed and exploitation so that as many people as possible can PRIVATELY own property (the major change to society that capitalism signified, pushing populations into abject poverty is just another form of slavery which is not new).
In the following video the innovation of capitalism is noted, where it comes from (basically England), the emergence of industrial capitalism signified by workers living in abject poverty and would best be described as "Vulture Capitalism" (a term taken from private equity businesses but, based on comparing effects, can be readily used as a description for GOP economic policies) and then the video compares capitalism to the theories of socialism. The theories are presented side by side as if on a scale while leaving out current cultural realities but this provides a good introduction to the topic of capitalism and socialism;
Capitalism and Socialism: Crash Course World History
Highlight:
The part of capitalism detrimental to society and a nation is its vulture capitalism aspect. Country's such as Denmark or Sweden have conquered this vulture capitalism part by reigning it in and making capitalism something anyone in their societies can pursue (that's a true free market, not one where industrial capitalists are free to control the market as they wish without "Government" (of 'we the people') interference;
Long hours, low wages. miserable working conditions, unemployment - Long hours and low wages predominate America. Working conditions have been alleviated with laws and unemployment has been reduced after years of stimulus applied by Obama Administration following traditionally and scientifically established economics that has [p itself over the decades and thus qualifies to be called a science (i.e. America is only half as bad as it could be but the Republicans are working on that with this fake - religion like - economics based on using whatever crap they can come up with to sell their policies EXCEPT the truth or their constituents wouldn't support them).
One of the innovations that characterize the western world, in the half a century or so that is not covered in the above video, is harnessing capitalism to benefit the community and nation as a whole. This has worked in European democracies (and has been labeled "Democratic Socialism" in America) and represents an accomplishment where the vulturistic component of 18th and 19th century industrial capitalism has been brought down to help the people and the community while increasing private property ownership, ease of starting a business and other such capitalistic opportunities that is represented by perfect competition in a market that has been made free for all, rather than just an elite, through regulation. In america the scene is the opposite. Here Vulture Capitalism reigns and people and being killed by the thousands and hundreds of thousands by forcing them into abject poverty (or just poverty and declining income - the declining middle class is indicative if this trend) of the industrial capitalism era (ironically funded by industrial capitalists through a network of nazi style propagandists that goes fundamentally against the Constitution oft the common good. One of the great ironies in America is that the Constitution that was established for the common good of society actually took root in Europe while Europe industrial capitalism and robber baron mentality of stealing from the people (environment damage, living in poverty, no healthcare and killing them for personal profits by bribing politicians etc) has taken root here because of some weird notions of being rich one day so you too can oppress people that has been inherited in the american mind set from the slave days (see myth 3).
The following article proves the above and constitute a walk through the phenomenon and problem and how we can take the country away from unconstitutional capitalism of vulture capitalism that the GOP and right (or their donors, really, since they fund the views)towards Constitutional capitalism that the words Democratic Socialism represents but doesn't necessarily get across due to historical connections and the lack of education amoungst the targeted population under GOP mind control; “Socialism” vs. “capitalism” is a false dichotomy We need go-go capitalism to afford a generous welfare state, and people won’t support go-go capitalism without a safety net. “Socialists” and Republicans forget different parts of this lesson.
Suddenly there’s a lively debate on both the left and the right about the specter of Socialism in America. According to Gallup, Democrats now view socialism in a more positive light than Capitalism. And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America, became an instant political star after she clinched the Democratic Party’s nomination for the New York 14th District’s House seat.
Some conservatives, brought up declaiming, “Better dead than red,” are understandably in a bit of a tizzy. In a fiery peroration on The View, Meghan McCain warned of the peril of going the way of socialist Venezuela, where, she says, people are “starving to death.”
In National Review, Kevin Williamson offers a rather more measured and illuminating conservative perspective. He argues that the vogue of “socialism,” embodied in the rise of Ocasio-Cortez, and the intemperate right-wing reaction to it, is mostly semantic — a matter of “words about words,” as he puts it, freighted with polarized sentiment and little definite meaning.
“All this talk about socialism isn’t about socialism,” Williamson writes. “It’s about the status quo.” The idea that “capitalism” has failed us and that “socialism” is the answer relies on a cartoonish oversimplification of reality. Current economic arrangements in the US, and throughout the developed world, involve a complex mix of “capitalist” Market institutions and “socialist” regulatory and redistributive institutions.
If our mixed system is failing many of us, it’s highly unlikely that the blame can be assigned exclusively to either its “capitalist” or “socialist” components, or to the fact that the system ismixed rather than purely one thing or the other. The real debate, as Williamson goes on to suggest, concerns the structure, balance, and integration of the elements that make up our political economy.
This gets lost when the debate is framed as a binary choice between “capitalism” — which the left blames for all contemporary ills — and “socialism.”
The polarized ideological charge around these hazily conceived rival ideals leaves both left and right with a dangerous blind spot. As Williamson argues, the left needs to better appreciate the role of capitalism in producing abundance. For its part, he says, the right needs to square up to the unyielding fact of human “risk aversion” and the indispensable role safety nets in placating this deep-seated distaste for feelings of uncertainty and insecurity by insuring us against the turbulence of capitalist dynamism.
Even if “socialism” isn’t really “what anxious young Americans are looking for,” Williamson says, conservatives need to “be honest with the fact that they aren’t buying what we’re selling, and do the hard work of understanding why and what to do about it.”
He’s right on all counts. I’d like to lend a hand and help the right better grasp why it’s bleeding market share, and why the “socialist” brand has caught fire with the “anxious young American” demographic.
The free market welfare state: how to make capitalism and socialism friends
Williamson is right that the new democratic socialists running for office aren’t calling for nationalization of industry or the abolition of private property (though some of their cheerleaders are). They’re calling for an extravagantly beefed-up welfare state, and a shift toward stronger governmental regulation of various industries. These are questionable ideas, but they won’t turn America into Venezuela.
Still, there’s a big difference between real, existing social democracy — of the sort on display in Denmark or Sweden —and the Christmas list exorbitance of the DSA platform. (If you’re confused by the difference between “social democracy” and “democratic socialism,” Sheri Berman is indispensable.) As Williamson observes, progressives in the mold of Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez seem not to know or care that today’s model social democracies also boast model capitalist economies that are in many ways more economically laissez-faire than the wickedly capitalist American system.
According to the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, for instance, Denmark and Sweden — where taxes are high and welfare spending is lavish — outscore the United States in the security of property rights, ease of starting a business, openness to trade, and monetary freedom (a measure of inflation and price controls). Both narrowly beat the US in overall “capitalist” economic freedom, despite receiving a stiff penalty from Heritage for their big-spending ways.
Heritage Foundation 2018 Index of Economic Freedom
As I’ve argued ad nauseam, go-go capitalism is how you pay for safety-net soft socialism. Ocasio-Cortez has so far flailed pretty badly on the “how would you pay for all this stuff?” question. She seems not to grasp that you can’t do so just by reallocating the Navy’s budget (though that would help). In the real world, you finance soft-socialist guarantees with a level of tax revenue and borrowing you can only sustain through capitalist innovation, competition, efficiency, trade, and growth. That’s the lesson of the Nordic social democracies.
The other side of the equation, the part the rightoften misses, is that insuring folks against bad luck and the downside risks of capitalist disruption is how you maintain political support for “neoliberal” market dynamism — and mute democratic demand for reactionary economic nationalism. (It’s also how you ensure that prosperity is broadly shared.)
On this score, Williamson insightfully chalks up the current appeal of both socialism and Trump’s mercantilism to the urgent human desire to be insulated from the anxiety of uncertainty, and suggests that the libertarian idea that “The free market will take care of it, or private charity will” is the right-wing analogue to socialist wishcasting about bottomless budgets and technocratic omnicompetence. It is a fantasy vision incapable of answering deep-seated anxieties about dislocation and loss that inevitably shape democratic politics. I wholly agree.
Instability and uncertainty are nerve-racking. The market competition that drives innovation and efficiency is a wrecking ball that leaves some among us sifting through the rubble, all the time. For those of us living paycheck to paycheck, and that’s most of us, it’s scary. Capitalism creates wealth by setting up a contest for profits that necessarily creates a steady stream of losers.
The fact that capitalism also creates a steady stream of opportunities does not, by itself, make the risk of losing tolerable. If rough seas keep tossing folks overboard, and people are barely keeping their heads above water (“Just keep paddling, Aunt Andrea!”), it’s not enough to be told that there’s usually a boat to swim to. We’re more willing to risk storm-tossed seas when the ship of state is bristling with lifeboats and manned by a competent crew.
That’s a key insight of “the free market welfare state.” Call it “lifeboat laissez-faire.” I’m glad to see Williamson sticking up for lifeboats. But I also don’t think risk aversion is the whole story behind the recent attraction to social democracy.
Rigged American capitalism is a big part of the problem
I disagree with Elizabeth Warren on a slew of policy particulars — on the minimum wage, single-payer health care, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, for example — but I think her recent affirmation of the progressive power of capitalist dynamism gets the bigger picture basically right:
I am a capitalist. ... I believe in markets. What I don’t believe in is theft, what I don’t believe in is cheating. That’s where the difference is. I love what markets can do, I love what functioning economies can do. They are what make us rich, they are what create opportunity. But only fair markets, markets with rules. Markets without rules is about the rich take it all, it’s about the powerful get all of it. And that’s what’s gone wrong in America.
She’s right. We need markets to make us richer. But we also need them to make all of us richer, and that’s not just about making sure that we’re indemnified against the risks of wrecking-ball competition. It’s also about making sure the basic rules of the game aren’t rigged to favor people who already won, locking the rest of us into a lower tier of possibility. Warren is a free-market social democrat in the Nordic mold. Her vision is a far cry from the anti-capitalist agenda of the Ocasia-Cortez and the DSA.
Now, the problem isn’t exactly “markets without rules.” The problem is that markets are defined by an incomprehensible jumble of regulatory kludges — an accumulation of individually reasonable but cumulatively stifling technocratic fixes — that strangle economic freedom for ordinary people, allowing the powerful to capture the economy by writing and selectively enforcing the rules to their advantage.
Warren pretty clearly gets this too. For example, she led the charge to deregulate the over-the-counter sale of hearing aids, against the objections of state-licensed audiologists and incumbent medical device manufacturers, promoting market competition that raises the quality and reduces the cost of a critical life-enhancing technology.
Ocasio-Cortez should take a page from Warren and learn to love markets. As should Republicans, who might come to grasp the appeal of combining sturdier safety nets with freer, fairer markets.
The GOP’s market rigging and rejection of the social safety net drives voters toward “socialism”
No less a classical liberal than F.A. Hayek supported a robust safety net capable of “providing for those common hazards of life against which few can make adequate provision.” It’s true, as Williamson says, that “There isn’t any obvious and non-arbitrary place to draw the line on those common hazards of life.” But he’s wrong that “the fundamental difference between Right and Left is where to draw that line (or those lines) and how to go about helping those we decide to help.”
A Republican Party that remains doggedly devoted to Grover Norquist’s goal of shrinking government until it’s small enough to drown in a bathtub isn’t pro-lifeboat. It’s pro-drowning. Moreover, cannibalizing Obamacare, setting public assistance ever further out of reach, and exploding the deficit with massive tax cuts doesn’t make the ruling political right a friend of free markets. Trump’s tariff-hiking, winner-picking economic nationalism, which looks to communist China as a model, is an immiserating morass of rank corruption. But that’s what the GOP currently stands for, whether conservative thinkers like it or not.
The right’s Pavlovian reaction to Ocasio-Cortez’s budget-busting democratic socialism has trapped it in a comforting haze of commie-fighting nostalgia. It leaves Republicans blind to the electoral threat posed by Warren’s Nordic-style social democracy, because they can’t see the difference; they can only see reds. Warren’s coalescing vision of the market-friendly welfare state doesn’t exactly amount to the second coming of Milton Friedman, but it’s far more intellectually sound and politically attractive than anything Republicans currently have on offer.
If the governing GOP is unable to hear what Hayekian conservatives like Williamson are saying and just keep on smashing the lifeboats, and fail to offer a compelling alternative to Warren’s vision for unrigging the economy, not only will they be totally overwhelmed on their left flank on social insurance, they might also find themselves outflanked on the issue of fair, open, competitive markets. They’ll get routed by the left on capitalism, still screeching about Venezuelan bread lines.
Will Wilkinson is the vice president for research at the Niskanen Center, and a Vox columnist.
What is left out of this article is that a small group of GOP donors - including the "owners" of Heritage institute - are actively applying their version of economics which would require many people to die (and is basically the same policy as Thanos in Avengers, Infinity War where he wants to kill half of the universes population for prosperity);
This Libertarian Strategy to Make America as Screwed-Up as TexasBefore there were the Koch Brothers, there was James McGill Buchanan, the inspiration for their modern right-wing oligarchy.
How would you draw a line connecting Buchanan to the Koch brothers?
Charles Koch supplied the money, but it was James Buchanan who supplied the ideas that made the money effective. An MIT-trained engineer, Koch in the 1960s began to read political-economic theory based on the notion that free-reign capitalism (what others might call Dickensian capitalism) would justly reward the smart and hardworking and rightly punish those who failed to take responsibility for themselves or had lesser ability. He believed then and believes now that the market is the wisest and fairest form of governance, and one that, after a bitter era of adjustment, will produce untold prosperity, even peace.But after several failures, Koch came to realize that if the majority of Americans ever truly understood the full implications of his vision of the good society and were let in on what was in store for them, they would never support it. Indeed, they would actively oppose it.
So, Koch went in search of an operational strategy -- what he has called a "technology" -- of revolution that could get around this hurdle. He hunted for 30 years until he found that technology in Buchanan's thought. From Buchanan, Koch learned that for the agenda to succeed, it had to be put in place in incremental steps, what Koch calls "interrelated plays": many distinct yet mutually reinforcing changes of the rules that govern our nation. Koch's team used Buchanan's ideas to devise a roadmap for a radical transformation that could be carried out largely below the radar of the people, yet legally. The plan was (and is) to act on so many ostensibly separate fronts at once that those outside the cause would not realize the revolution underway until it was too late to undo it. Examples include laws to destroy unions without saying that is the true purpose, suppressing the votes of those most likely to support active government, using privatization to alter power relations -- and, to lock it all in, Buchanan's ultimate recommendation: a "constitutional revolution."
Read more about the Thanos correlation to the GOP here.
In communism and socialism the same problem of how to deal with vulture capitalism exploiting people to the point where they live in slave like conditions from poverty was addressed by trying to turn ALL means of production to the State (something a small group of people have never achieved as power corrupts);
Communism vs. Socialism: What's The Difference? | NowThis World
More specific details;
Democratic Socialism combines the private property aspect of capitalism with the desire to help the community as per Article ..... but without the need or desire to control modes of production. So we still have independent actors with wealth and thus power with economic opportunities for all (what was previously known as "the American Dream" but is now more common elsewhere where Democratic Socialism exists, i.e. western Europe). ONLY regulations control the system rather than the State controlling the means of productions it creates channels for private industry to follow while making it safe and open for everyone to take part in it (at least that is the goal that HAS been achieved in several first world country's in Europe, I think its Americas long slave owning Southern past that prevents it from treating its people as anything other than slaves unless they are rich. Is it just a coincidence that the Egyptian God Osiris is a god that dies and is resurrected with everyone else as slaves/peasants before him (or his earthly representative, the Pharaoh)?
In other words, in some western European countires that have REGULATIONS allowing people to run means of production but limiting how much they can exploit the people so that EVERYONE in the community can have a good life (i.e. production is used for the common good through independent actors but instead of charging a billion dollars for a cancer cure they have to charge something affordable rather than let the person die or bad wages that give the owners extra ordinary profits while subject the workers to poverty unless they can work 60 days a week (medicare for all is how societies bring private hospitals etc. to support the population while it seeks to act independently in the market while providing a safety net for the common good. and so on., i.e. Democratic Socialism.
The following country (Sweden) has a higher tax rate than America and provides actual services to it's Citizens... not to mention jobs and international growth into third world countries such as the US. Notice that the "entitlements" the Swedish get is better than what Megyn Kelly was fighting for... after saying it was wrong. Really. Fox News seems to have no honor. It certainlyisn't "news" in the remotest sense of the word. More like Gossip mongering using fear.
Swede Dreams - Sweden is everything America used to be -- dominant, arrogant and so much more beautiful -- while America has become Sweden's Mexico. (04:53):
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook
The Stockholm Syndrome Pt. 1 - Wyatt Cenac travels to Sweden to wake up their hauntingly thin citizens from their socialist nightmare. (04:38) :
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook
The Stockholm Syndrome Pt. 2 -The Swedes simply will not apologize to Wyatt Cenac for socialism. (05:08) :
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook
What the Republicans are doing is opposing regulations as well while calling any regulations socialism. Why? because regulations means their handful for donors can't control everything like the Monarchs of old (think of our current Oligarchy as a table of British lords and I think you are getting a good idea of the basic structure of our Government - at least as far as policy making goes).
Behind the Republican Rhetoric: The Misleading Appeal of Free-Market Capitalism
Basic belief systems, if regularly reinforced by carefully orchestrated advertising campaigns, are enormously difficult things to shift. Paradi
