It's true that Venezuela completely bungled their economy, by being wholly reliant on oil to subsidize the country. But attempted coups and other subversion of the country, by the US, cannot help in the slightest.
Hey now, I read "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" too, but Venezuela's current crisis has very little to do with American meddling. They created this mess themselves, and made it worse by flouting the rule of law. And I don't blame a little meddling after Chavez' decided to repatriate American Investments.
I do remember some journalists lionizing Chavez when times were good.
Given Chavez's overt hostility toward the US, it's not surprising that there would have been endeavors that are described by apologists as subversive, but no one with any credibility is saying that those actions had significant influence. In fact, the material I've read about the nature of CIA interventions in general concludes that they are largely ineffective.
Meh, incompetent corrupt government is incompetent corrupt government regardless of economic system
No, India and China have done very well in the past three decades after their economic 'liberalisation' from a socialist model despite the government remaining incompetent and corrupt.
20th century has fashioned enough examples to see that socialism as an economic system is far worse than capitalism. Yet the ideology still has legs because western academia seems to be infested with it.
What I want is Capitalism that can evolve and continue to exist after it has devalued labor.
What I want to is Make America Great Again with at least the sort of wealth workers in the 50s and 60s enjoyed.
What that requires is a social safety net, paid for by tax dollars. You scream socialist / communist / whatever, but we are Capitalists.
Please find a serious poster in P&N who says Venezuela is doing anything well.
This is correct. Liberalism should probably be outlawed and anyone expressing liberal opinions should probably be rounded up into camps so they don't continue to infect real Americans.Except every socialist, communist , progressive and most Democrats.
Most ATOT "socialists" are capitalists who believe in some socialization for a social safety net.
I haven't seen anybody taking about setting up a command economy or separating the means of production from private hands or revoking private ownership of land.
'socialism' in the US is a bogeyman in the right wing delusional fantasy.
When left wingers look at Denmark or Norway or some other country that they admire, those countries are actual Capitalist countries with private property, private businesses, and free and open stock markets.
I agree. The government should never serve the people because that is vote buying.I do agree with you but I also think those safety nets have a tendency to morph into simply vote buying handouts over time also.
Basically, what you say here -- about that era of history and limited "socialistic approaches" is true. After WWII, data about the money supply shows that the distribution of income and wealth was more even than it had ever been since. Roosevelt had supposedly made a bargain with 2-percenters; labor unions were strong. Then, 20+ years after that, the corporations found ways to get around a regulatory environment that had supported the post-war income distribution. And corporate income took off, while wages began a long period of stagnation.
The post-war era was described as "the Mixed Economy." there was a free market of private good production and consumption, under a sufficient level of regulation to even the playing field, together with public goods provision through our three-tiered system of government. What seems to get inadequate mention is that the entire "mixed economy" brought in an unprecedented level of prosperity.
The use of the word "socialism" as an alarmist indictment of this or that program, public education or health-care and so on, is an overgeneralized and useless argument.
Capitalism is a social, economic phenomenon -- not a "system." One could create a system that involves pervasive socialism, or we could look at socialism as a sort of toolbox of approaches that address certain problems for which the market is totally inadequate.
Ideological purity does not make common sense. And many of us take the position that we will not jettison the mixed economy by drowning the government in a bathtub. In other words, it would have to be "over our dead bodies".
Like none of us remember leftists fawning all over Chavez!
https://www.salon.com/2013/03/06/hugo_chavezs_economic_miracle/
https://panampost.com/daniel-raisbeck/2016/05/29/top-10-clueless-celebrities-hugo-chavez-revolution/
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-deafening-silence-of-hollywoods-chavistas/article/2621720
And I guess everyone forgot the left's absolute love affair with Castro and Co. Everyone burn their che t-shirts?
The funny thing to me about the left on subjects like this is you always do the predictable. When the dictators and crap regimes that yes indeed clueless leftists fawned over fail as they inevitably will, it's back to cherry picking Scandinavia. And making believe no one on the left ever rails against capitalism- as in get rid of it and replace with some pipe dream.
At least this thread shows some progress. Lefties finally able to admit that capitalism is what really pays for socialism.
I hope Putin gave you a bonus for thinking up that one.Chavez was killed by a genetically engineered soft tissue cancer virus (something related to human papilloma virus) that the CIA infected him with.
I view it, not as a state we need to return to, but as a teachable moment in history. There are fundamentals behind that worker friendly moment in history that speak to the income inequality we face today. It helps set a standard of what is normal, and how abnormal the poverty of our workers is today. It helps a conservative learn why we need our government to do something to protect workers.
Now having learned lessons from our post war prosperity, and the additional lesson of our recent success with stimulus to recover from 2008, anyone who is open to reason HAS to conclude that money in the hands of our consumers is the life blood of Capitalism, of a prosperous America. Then you look back and witness the changes in income distribution and it's quite frankly shocking. A dramatic change has unfolded to stifle our worker class, to deprive consumers / labor of value.
I could go into why that is, but suffice it to say that Capitalism is naturally evolving to eliminate labor. Looking forward to the future of automation, and we need to take the lessons learned and adapt them to real, sweeping, policy for how we're going to protect our consumers, and through them our economy.
From this knowledge I have only one solution. I'll be open to alternatives, but I have yet to find Republicans open to discussing the reality of our situation. So I find myself at a default position of supporting basic income and medicare for all. A sweeping change to provide a real social safety net. So Americans can find prosperity again, and life happy and healthy lives again. Full implementation would probably yield a shared prosperity the likes of which the world has never seen.
There's more than enough wealth in America, the problem is trickle down is a fraud. The only way workers / consumers are going to see a dime is if we tax it from Wall Street first. And when automation truly impacts us, there won't be any choice, we'll be forced to do it.
But inequality is going down. That's the only thing that counts to people like Jhhnn. Who cares if the people are worse off so long as the rich are getting screwed over worse, amirite? Making sure the rich pay their "fair share" is worth missing a meal or two, or maybe all of them for days at a time.
That is the beauty of State Socialism. It wipes out wealth inequity by making everybody poor.
I hope Putin gave you a bonus for thinking up that one.
That is the beauty of State Socialism. It wipes out wealth inequity by making everybody poor.
What can we do to bring down the costs of health care? Do we need the death panels that Palin talked about?Everybody is poor in America but about the top few percent. Do the math yourself. I define poor as the ability to be completely and utterly ruined due to medical conditions. We are the only first world nation without socialized medicine and the only first world nation where medical bankruptcy is a thing...... in fact the number one cause of bankruptcy in America. Once you recognize that you and the people you love are at risk in a way experienced in no other first world country, THEN you want what they have.